Not much to report. Which is, in many ways. A triumph. I am loathe to pronounce that it was better this week than last week, because that will invoke Murphy's Law and an anvil will hit me in the head, or the gullet.
I am either still working a lot of the Devil through my system, or I am now being snuck beets when I sleep. It seems like it is taking longer to get the stain out of me this week, but so far the nausea that was the worst part without question has floated just a bit lower than it did last week. The overarching greying of the world is there, and the squeeze within myself, and a coating on the tongue and mouth that makes everything I eat or drink seem like maybe I have emptied the old sock I kept pennies in when I was a kid into my mouth.
But the three-burp crescendo of fear, and the terror at the encroaching tray; those seem a little less. I get the shakes a bit when I lie down (lay down? I never got that one). But not as as bad.
Not as bad. Kind of odd how triumphant that can seem, but I'll take it.
If they come in in time I will simply type out my lab numbers for the day, from blood pulled this morning. I am pretty near the bottom on all the ranges, which is interesting while being very very scary. But it is nice to have these pieces of paper for when I feel like maybe I can wander down the hall, maybe I can step outside. Then I just look at where there are large arrays of the letter "L" next to everything. It indicates that the number in question is Lower than it should be. And I think they have an LL category which translates, roughly, into Holy Shit Sit Down Right Now.
It is a strange dance. In rounds this morning there was discussion of the fact that sometimes on my protocol people's bodies are actually starting to refill the gutted passages with good stuff while they are still in chemo: that the final chemo in induction actually crosses purposes with your own rebuilding.
It had been bugging me: I understand the kill-you-but-don't-kill-you-to-save-you thing. I really do. I have tried to embrace it as hard as I have ever tried to embrace anything. And so I actually felt a little worried that maybe this week was not as horrific.
I had to kind of firm myself to the thought, and it occurred to me mostly at night, but I kept kind of thinking: Are they hitting me hard enough? Should they be knocking me lower? Faster? Should it be worse?
On the one hand, the past week, and last Thursday in particular, were dark places of the body and emotions I could cry with joy just contemplating never living through again. On the other hand: I've got more to give, right? I wasn't hurling, crawling through my own screams, just quivering and burbling like a badly tuned outboard?
Did they need to do that? Would that have killed the cancer better? Should I be closer to dead, to get better?
And the medical extras make it hard. As much as I hate the pred--and hand on chest I hate the pred about as much as anything I can hate--it is doing some sort of weird medical cover-job, keeping me falsely lighter or better or whatever it does--along with muscle wastage at an alarming rate and the kind of gas I used to only be able to create with a heady mixture of beef jerky and microwave popcorn over hours and hours of gestation.
And there's a slew of morning pills, that seem to get a little bigger and more acrid each day. Pills to save me from stuff I may or may not get. Prophylaxis. That word was hilarious years ago because it just meant 'condom.' Ah, to be young.
So, like my Ambien issue--and I'm just a junkie now; that took one night's pretty-good sleep and I'm a Mickey Rourke character for the cracked half-nugget--I am trapped between a lot of medicine, and a little lost.
They tell us whatever we ask, it isn't that. It is just that I'm lying in this body, feeling like maybe my hair is loosening finally, feeling like densities are shifting, feeling odd swells of hum in my ears that wander away again. And I can't get my footing, you know? Can't get that locator point.
Then again, this time last week I couldn't have typed half of this blather, so maybe I should just shut up and leave it at that for now. I'll do a medical-numbers bit later if the labs come in.
Happy Thursday.
