The Chemo Diaries. Is it over yet?

Today is the first day since the fourth treatment (last Monday) that I haven't wanted to off myself.  It's also the first day that I have felt like moving my fingers or any other body part so I thought I could get a blog post off now that the kids are in bed and now that I am in my nightgown smoking some weed.  I hope you are, too.

By the way, did you guys see this article in the Washington Post today?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/for-patients-like-me-marijuana-is-a-necessity/2013/07/08/a87bfc5e-daa8-11e2-9df4-895344c13c30_story.html

My mom sent it to me this morning and I was confused and angry for a hot second because I thought she had gone and published my diary in the newspaper.

Anyway, the past three or four days over here have been low, low, low, how low can you go.  Eating continues to be a nightmare.  Maybe a banana.  Maybe.  A cookie?  Ok, yes.  Dinners are a bowl of cereal and an Ativan.  It's a good thing I gained five pounds a couple of weeks ago.  Willa has now seen me so often sitting at a table with my head in my hands that tonight she asked me, innocently and earnestly "Why do you always do your head like that?"  

I woke up this morning and had to get ready relatively quickly to be on time for my 9:30am doctors appointment so I could wait 45 minutes in the waiting room.  First of all, doing anything quickly at this stage is not an easy task especially when it involves eating and then riding in a cab.  But also, an extra 45 minutes in the Cancer Center is enough to give you cancer as far as I'm concerned.  That's quite a lot of time to get all worked up thinking about dying and feeling sorry for yourself.  Then tears start to fall and I have to fight them back because technically my doctor COULD walk in at any minute even though she doesn't.  But when she does she could see me crying and fetch the social worker from the 10th floor again so I'd better hurry up and wipe these tears away and pretend I have seasonal allergies.  

Michael rubs my back to calm me down and after I think about how much I love him and how grateful I am to have him by my side I think about how much I would love a massage and how I should schedule one for every damn day for the rest of my life.  But then I wonder if they make massage tables with holes for breasts to go into because I still have a brick rock tissue expander in my left boob that would most certainly have to go somewhere were I to lie down on my stomach and have someone karate chop this tension out of my shoulders.

I made it home somehow and collapsed on the couch and Dad said I have to eat and I moaned and thought about what I could eat if I could eat anything.  And what I really wanted was a Duncan Hines cake that we used to make when we were little right out of the box when we thought that meant we were baking.  And on top, I would want that frosting that comes in the round little canister box that can also sit on a grocery shelf for 12 years and not go bad.  Given that I am the unlucky one in seven women who gets breast cancer for no apparent reason that anyone is able to share with me, those two food products are probably some of the very last items on a list of things that I should ever eat.  So I think again and scan my brain for a craving and I land on, none other than, a Green Dragon roll from Sushi West with extra ginger on the side.  What?  I order up.  Dad thinks I'm insane.

I buy $40 worth of Green Dragon rolls, extra ginger, seaweed salad, and miso soup.  When it arrives I set it out and I'm pretty confident that I still want to eat it, but I'll admit, I'm a little nervous about this craving.  This could go horribly, horribly wrong.  I eat.  I don't throw up so I eat some more.  Then I take a nap and set the alarm so I don't miss my therapy appointment and somewhere in the middle of therapy I realize I might, might, might be over the hump.