You’re halfway there, ohhh, oh, living on a prayer
So. This is the most unfun part of the cycle. This is the part of the cycle where I come home and get extremely nauseated and puke. Despite two kinds of anti-nausea meds. This didn’t happen last time, but it did happen the time before, so there’s no telling, it seems. Yesterday the chemo went alright though. K sat with me all day and it was good to have one-on-one time; that’s the part I like most about having chemo buddies.
I had my same nice nurse as last time. She’s positive and calming and wise. And she told me I looked beautiful with my hair all gone. She said all I needed was big necklace and a halter dress to complete the look.
Most of the chemo is from stuff dangling in clear bags from the metal hat rack thingy but there are two drugs they give you by injecting them straight into the IV. One is Rituximab and it’s bright red, a pretty Kool Aid color and it takes about five-ten minutes to inject, so me and the nurse sit face to face and it’s this kind of intimate ritual. She even said that as she was setting up the injections, that it was like a ritual, you carefully prepare each part and then sit down and do it. So we talked about her 16-year-old daughter and how she’s growing up part Indian, part American, and as a result isn’t bratty rebellious typical American teen. And again, she complimented my veins.
Everyone told me how good I looked, how healthy. Dr. Z said last time I looked peaked, but this time I looked good. Which is affirming somehow. He didn’t prod my nodes too deeply this time; I’m getting new tests on February 8, I guess they’ll tell him all he needs to know. Yikes. More nuclear lemonade drinking for the CAT scan. And I’m home now, feeling kind of sad and wishing there was someone who could make me lunch.
Went to the yoga/cancer/support group the other day and it wasn’t nearly as bad as I had feared. I’m usually not so good with the group thing, but I made a meditation out of my discomfort, just watching it, not buying into it so much, seeing it as an old remnant, like a ratty coat that wasn’t me, but something I’ve been wearing since the last few times I was shot down and skewered in so-called support groups. Kept some armor up, but it was nice.
Restorative yoga on bolsters with lots of back petting from the three instructors and then a sharing circle with a little clay sculpture in the middle of terra cotta people holding hands. There were about four other women there with more to come and almost everyone seemed to be in remission, I was the only one currently in chemo. They introduced me and welcomed me as the new person. It was good to be around like-minded people who seemed interested in becoming more conscious and aware, framing their problems in a similar way as I do. I don’t think I can deal with mainstream support groups right now, like at Gilda’s where you get people with an extremely wide range of coping skills and approaches. While the nurse was giving me chemo, I said it much be fascinating to see how the exact same medicines affect people so differently. She said it was and that so much depends on mindset, what a person’s background is and where they’re coming from and how some people have no coping skills at all, and you have to kind of show them how to cope.
Right now my coping skills are about chocolate, friends, family, hugs from T, thinking about the future, trying to stay in the present, laughing, food, my shrink, magazines, DVDs, writing, seeing this all as part of some crazy spiritual journey I’m on that will hopefully humble and strengthen me and help me have more compassion. Though right now all I really want to do is sleep and cry and have someone serve me something hot. Ah, well.
