Chemo, take me away!!

It seems crazy (thus totally befitting my character), but I’m seriously looking forward to chemo tomorrow. My fun and funny friend Jess is accompanying me, and I have no doubt we will laugh nonstop throughout the entire 6 ½ hour ordeal, just as we did last week when she joined me for a rousing day of shopping, a nuclear heart scan, a bone marrow biopsy, and dinner on a lovely patio with an incredible view of… a parking lot. But who cared? Not us. We had wine.

Jess and I laugh constantly. Last week we started our laughter when the semi next to us on the interstate blew a tire and we both almost had heart attacks. We laughed about what a fabulous driver I am that my hands didn’t even flinch on the wheel. (We should have laughed that my hands were even ON the wheel since I have a bad habit of driving with my knee.) We laughed delightedly over our Ann Taylor purchases. We laughed when I chose an umbrella table at lunch – inside the food court – just so we could feel like we were lunching on vacation. We laughed when we were commenting back and forth on her Facebook post while sitting right across the table from each other. We laughed when Google maps’ traffic reports showed red where a few minutes ago they were green. We laughed that wherever we drove, the red followed us.

We really laughed while Jess described how she intended to secretly photograph (or possibly directly accost) hot doctors and other attractive men as part of her plan for snagging me a wealthy mate in order to make cancer treatment profitable. We especially laughed that while I was having my heart scan, Jess was playing landing pad for a clutzy woman who fell over a sign and right into her lap (an event Jess referred to as the “little commotion in the waiting room” that I unfortunately missed).

We laughed pretty heartily at the fact that I tend to jump off the table when someone comes anywhere near my bum, even with gentle fingers since they are the precursor to sticking a needle in my ass, and then we laughed that the darling PA who did my bone marrow biopsy had such warm, soft hands that I only flinched once, and barely at that. We laughed when the first attempt at coaxing liquid from my hip bone didn’t work, initially because it didn’t hurt like I thought it would and then because we realized the lack of liquid was why it didn’t hurt. We even laughed when it did hurt, both at my constant repetition of “It’s not that bad – it’s not that bad – it’s not that bad” and my inability to pinpoint the level of pain. “Three? Maybe four?” Heck, I admitted that I don’t even know what a ten would feel like on the pain scale. “Not childbirth?” the very pregnant PA asked incredulously since I had already informed her of my body-on-fire-from-boobs-to-knees-for-what-felt-like-hours-but-was-really-only-a-half-hour labor experience with my son. (No worries – Jess and I both reassured her that the pain was worth it and entirely forgettable the very second that beautiful baby was safely ensconced in his mommy’s arms.) I figured if the pain wasn’t bad enough to make me pass out, it couldn’t have been more than an eight. And though I had compared the wrist pain from that holy-freaking-hell IV pushing two days earlier to labor pain, I also figured it couldn’t have been that bad when it was confined to such a small area. We laughed that I was so charming in the midst of having a corkscrew repeatedly drilled into my freaking BONE that the PA claimed – during my charming attempt at small talk – that though she generally disliked having to do bone marrow biopsies, she was actually having FUN for this one.

Of course we laughed when the car lurched forward then lurched to a stop as Jess adjusted to driving what she called my “go kart” (she’s used to a Jeep Grand Cherokee – I have a Toyota Prius), and having noted the mileage as she attempted to discern the various numbers on my dashboard, on the way home we were thus able to laugh when we realized we had only gone fifteen miles in an hour. Our biggest laugh of the day may have come then, also, when we both almost choked with laughter when Snoop Dogg suddenly burst out of the radio with “Drop it like it’s hooooootttt; drop it like it’s hooooottt.” And our final laugh was later that evening as I lay on my couch, pressing my slightly bleeding hip to my fist (through a heating pad) while I texted Jess that perhaps we should have realized that alcohol would act as a blood thinner. Whoops!

So if anything, I know that tomorrow I will be laughing -- possibly at the same time I am also crying, but that’s not unusual for me.  And it's the laughter that counts.

I also know that I will be confined to a bed in a room that someone else has cleaned to the point of sterilization, with no piles of crap that someone else has created and I don’t have time to deal with. It will be 6 ½ hours of lounging. Thus, in comparison to these last few days, it will be heaven.

People can say, “Don’t worry about getting things done! Someone else will do it!” but that’s not true. As a single mother, not only am I the only adult living in the house, I am the ONLY adult, period, who is truly invested in what happens in my house and what it looks like. So perhaps someone else IS willing to come help, but inevitably others have their own agendas, their own schedules, and their own ideas of what should be a priority.

I’ve never been one to feel pressured to keep up my house a certain way to please others. This is not about that pressure to be the perfect wife or to conform to some unrealistic societal standard. This is about what makes me comfortable – and after years of disorganization, what makes me comfortable is keeping my house organized. The problem with that is that in the midst of my trying to do so, I have children who are – at the exact same time – creating chaos behind me. And though I may want to achieve my peaceful state of mental nirvana well before they hook me up to a vat of chemicals tomorrow, others figure that as long as it gets done, it doesn’t matter.

But to me it matters very much. I need to feel as if something is accomplished. And as I write this, I feel as if nothing is. There are dishes all over the kitchen (from what, I have no idea, since I haven’t cooked a meal here in days). The living room is stacked with crap. Everything that inhabits my bedroom is currently piled all over my bed and cannot be replaced in its original dwelling spot until the carpets dry – at about 8 o’clock tonight, the same time I am supposed to be leaving for Chicago. The almost $500 worth of organic fresh produce and baking materials I so diligently picked out are sitting in the kitchen, waiting to become “Magic Mineral Broth” and “Anytime Bars” as nutrient rich, energy-creating nosh for tomorrow’s ordeal, but I can’t don my chef’s hat until other things are finished first – such as dealing with the piles of crap in the sunroom that has been freshly painted (but isn’t quite done yet) and has to have a rug laid before the furniture being moved out of my little apartment tomorrow can be moved into it. Both mine and my parents’ vehicles are filled with boxes and other things that were already moved out of the apartment, and though I’m not sure where it’s all going to go (because if there are boxes of crap ANYWHERE in sight when I return from chemo tomorrow, my anxiety level will go through the roof), it’s got to go SOMEWHERE, and on a day when temperatures are supposed to reach 100 degrees, that cannot be the garage. The dining room table is still stacked with papers I haven’t had a chance to go through – Jake’s new legos are still on the living room floor – his curtains still aren’t hung – the tile in the hallway is spotted and in need of mopping… Shoot, even the sheets on my bed (the ones currently buried under four feet of stuff) need to be changed.

And so I’m wishing that chemo required hospitalization.

I’m trying not to fret over what I’m going to find when I return home tomorrow. I’m trying to be appreciative for the help that has been given to me. But I’m frustrated that this disease has already put me through the kinds of procedures that have left me unable to simply complete these tasks on my own. I’m fearful that I will run out of money, despite my great insurance, because of travel costs and the fact that I may have to miss so much school this fall that I burn through my sick days and have to take dock days (which, for a teacher, means a hell of a lot more money than for those whose salary is based on 250 days of work instead of only 188), and organic, cancer-fighting foods (especially the miraculously healthy raw, sprouted grains) cost way more than I’m used to spending on groceries (to mention that they take a lot more time to prepare than picking up over-processed, health-threatening fast food).

The WORST part is that I’m particularly angry that these frustrations and fears actually led me yesterday to the point of thinking that I wished I had a husband. WHAT THE F#@%?!?! You KNOW the shit has gotten bad when I reach that kind of a low. So I had to have a talk with myself in order to remind me that a husband would take up too much space, invade my privacy, prevent me from calling ALL the shots ALL the time, and generally piss me off way more than he would help. I fought back a little, throwing in that a husband would be big and strong and capable of getting things done that I couldn’t do – and that cuddles and kisses from a toddler are one thing, but a husband (any husband of mine, anyway) would be a deliciously sensual kisser, and would have the kind of strong arms and chest that could envelop me in total safety any time I was feeling weak or scared or just exhausted by life, not to mention sex… But that’s when I cut myself off and reminded me of the challenges of being in a relationship - challenges I'm just not up for dealing with right now.

So to encourage stress relief independently, I succumbed: I ate a bacon cheeseburger. And fries. And drank two beers – which, pathetically, was not even good beer!! Just some cheap light crap that Jake’s dad had left in my fridge. (But at least there was beer in fridge, since there is – shockingly – no wine in my house.) And for “dessert,” I proceeded to eat my body weight in “Hint of Lime” Tostitos. (If you have not tried these, DON’T. You will become addicted.)  So now today I'm stressed over all of that.  Geez, Louise.  I need to indulge in some healthy dark chocolate and get over it!

So this morning I’m rallying. Or at least trying to. Though I haven’t had time to blog in days, today I decided my first step toward self-“medication” would be to make time. And when my mother showed up ever-so-thoughtfully toting an under-the-bed storage container for some things I suggested yesterday I would store under my bed, I expressed gratitude. I’ve tried to keep my snappishness to a minimum. And I’m reminding myself silently that they are being ridiculously patient with the fact that while my parents are now clearing out the sunroom, I have my bum planted on the couch while I type. They don’t know that I’m blogging – they don’t know that I’ve chosen this as a form of therapy this morning. But they’re not saying a word - - - they’re just working, and asking minimal questions when necessary. GOD BLESS THEM.

But now I’m down to eight hours until the Lioness Club meeting I am determined to attend tonight begins and so I must hit “publish” and bask in the glow (albeit a dim one) of having gotten something completed today. Heck – it’s a step in the right direction anyway. :o)