The Chemo Diaries. Week 1 Debrief.

So that was Week 1 of chemo.  Not terrible, but also not easy.  And apparently it actually gets worse.  My nurse described it to me as getting punched.  The first time you get punched, you can take the hit.  (Really?!)  But the third and fourth time you get punched it is harder to recover.  And she will be punching me again next Monday.

Mornings seem to be the hardest.  I wake up and try to tend to the kids for their own sense of normalcy and my own, but then I am quickly winded.  Chemo laughs at me and says "Where do you think you're going?" and throws me back in bed where I don't fully sleep, I half-sleep and semi-meditate so I don't waste precious energy being angry at my weak and worthless body.  It's also a dangerous time to think, so I try to avoid that, too.  Wouldn't it be stupid to think about all of the things I could be doing if I didn't have cancer?  Or worse yet, to think about the fact that I might not even have cancer anymore but I still need to poison my body just in case?  But it would be really pointless to think about how the hell I got cancer in the first place, right?  I mean, that would be like not using your brain at all.  So instead, I think about my life one year from now, with a full head of hair and a bra full of breasts.

No I don't.  I can't manage it.  I can barely think about the afternoon.

This weekend we were in the country - Michael, the kids, and my sister Jenny.  And we learned two very important things.  We learned that I have to eat every two hours or the shit hits the fan.  And we also learned that Willa's favorite color is meat.

I should also mention that I had my head shaved last week so, in addition to getting used to my new pathetic body, I am also getting used to the loss of yet another body part.  Contrary to earlier rumination, I think it can safely be said that shaving your head is not, in fact, fun.  Buying a wig is somewhat fun.  But I don't think it measurably outweighs the fact that you have just cut off all of your hair.  Which is what I did last Friday at a wig salon in midtown with the moral support of my sister Kate.  Thank god for sisters.  I don't know how she did it, but she watched the whole thing.  She watched while Edward ponytailed my hair into 15-20 sections.  She watched as he cut each of them off (so we could donate them to Locks of Love).  And then she watched as the worst hair cut you could possibly imagine (I'm just guessing here, because I didn't actually look) turned into, roughly, Natalie Portman's shaved head.  Or at least that's how Kate described it to family members in one of her text updates.  I don't think I look like Natalie Portman.  I think I look like my brother Danny.  Which is to say, very handsome but with one breast.

It took me a couple of days, but I was finally able to look at myself in the mirror and that in itself was a milestone.  It took my kids about the same amount of time, though every now and then they will be blunt and tell me I should go put my wig on.  Oh yes, I did buy a wig, thinking I would need or want to find what other cancer gals describe as their "dignity."  But I am still searching and have not yet found my dignity, though I will let you know when I do.  The wig is super cute, but an itchy pain in the ass.  And among my other alopecia accessories are a black cap that I can wear to bed or during the day to keep my head warm or to spare my kids my shaved head.  I have a little hair piece that I can wear under a scarf or a hat which if you saw on its own would give you nightmares for weeks.  And I have a box of scarves that I am playing with.  I am also at the point where, after 37 years, I am thinking I will get my ears pierced.  Because wouldn't a chemo scarf look so much better with some dangly earrings?

Surgery on my breast not only seems like a distant memory, it seems like the easy part.  I have almost completely forgotten about my tissue expander, the big red scar on my chest, and the corded veins in my left arm.  You see, if a mastectomy is a coyote in the hills of LA hunting down and eating your poodle in broad daylight, then chemo is the fire breathing dragon that sits at the top of that hill and eats your children and then burns down your city.  

I will come up with a better metaphor for my next blog post.