Ahem. I'd like to present my interpretation of chemo on the cancer patient. I call it Rose Gets Injected with a Bunch of Toxic Crap and Turns All Nasty. Please, no comments about my artistic genius. I'm trying to remain humble.
Results of my CT scan are in: Marked improvement, but the damn cells are still there. Almost gone, but still there. So I had chemo today. Boo. And I'll have round number eight, too. And after that, I'll have radiation. Boo again.
I've decided that chemo is a lot like an earthquake. You know how a 5.0 quake has a shaking amplitude 10 times that of a 4.0 (thanks, Wikipedia)? That's how chemo treatments are. Each is 10 times more difficult to endure than the previous round. I can't begin to express how demoralizing it is to walk into a room feeling vibrant and alive and then 6 hours later to walk out sick, drained, yucky. And then to know that that feeling won't just go away, but will soon be met with pain, sleeplessness, exhaustion. I can't truly be feeling much more than I felt after the first or second treatments, but it's the knowing, the becoming more and more familiar with the process that makes it so much worse.
What's been the hardest on me lately, though, is the loss of my eyelashes. I know it sounds vain, but they did make me feel feminine, pretty, special. They were thick and long and looked great with mascara. Now I'm bald, nearly eyelashless, and obviously cancer striken. The lashes will probably grow back, but it's extra hard for me to look in the mirror now. I can't cover up my eyes with a pretty bandana. Well, I could. But that would just be silly. And dangerous.
Sometimes I feel like a big whiny whiner. People have said in efforts to comfort me, "You know, I knew a girl who had chemo for 4 years straight," or, "Yeah, her drips lasted 96 hours, not just 7." I feel like I can barely take what is coming at me now; it's impossible--and even enraging--to imagine the horror some have to go through. And the children. It's just not fair.
My aunt told me the story this week of how my grandpa responded when Dr. Gaeke came into the hospital room and told him there was nothing more she could do for the non-Hodgkins lymphoma and pancreatic cancer he'd been fighting for 9 years. A jokester 'til the end, he looked at her and said, "So doc, are you telling me I shouldn't renew my hunting license this fall?" He died 6 weeks later, his wife and six children at his bedside, at the age of 66.
That Stand Up to Cancer event was just on TV. I couldn't watch because it's all just too real for me right now. But I did catch their slogan: This is where the end of cancer begins.
The
end of cancer. That sounds so good. If it sounds good to you too, you can donate
here.
