Battlefield Me

Full disclosure: I am writing on the last half hour of Ativan and the first half hour of Remeron. So could be on or off both right now; not sure.

The Leukemia took up residence in the center of my bones, in the marrow. In a very personal space.

The Chemotherapy has to, with much much less elegance, get to the same place, and kill the Leukemia.

It is like chasing a snake down a hole using a gas-powered ditch-digger spinning an auger as big around as my leg.

But it is what the Medical Establishment has so far, and I'll take it.

But the fight, the whole fight; this is important: the whole fight takes place in me.

I am Agincourt, El Alemein, Bikini Atoll. I am the field of battle, good guys and bad guys dying all the time within my frail walls.



My intake of the mood-altering drugs has changed and bloomed for interesting reasons: throwing up is, apparently, abhorrent to everyone, including my Drs.

N and I went to meet the soft-but-quick-spoken (and apparently very attractive) GI Dr on Wednesday. We told him about the more than a dozen drugs I am now on or will be on again soon. We ran through all the symptoms, from good times and bad. We apologized that I was actually feeling relatively OK and so could not perform for him the 'pyloric muscle shuffle' of the 'look ma! A retch but no food' tricks I had been mastering mere weeks ago.

He took copious notes--his typing rivaling N's furious finding of space on the rapidly filling worksheet page she had going; half the time both of them writing the same thing.

He seemed to figure out pretty quickly that A: We had been around the medical block a bit already and understood the basic meat that is me and B: we weren't morons and C: we were interested in the mechanisms and the whys of what he was thinking and what he would recommend.

He gave us a brief version of his GI training, so that we had it made abundantly clear to us that nausea is almost uniformly and always an act of the mind. That the 'Vomit Center" (which came in second in the 1997 Lever Brands "Worst Name For a New Mall or Hockey Arena" contest) is in the head, and that what it does is allow or disallow the flow between neuroreceptors for substances like neoepinephrine, dopamine, and serotonin...

...which are the happy substances, or the sad substances, depending on how they are being controlled by drugs like Ativan, Zanax, Remeron, and their ilk.

When our main Drs gave me that Ativan they, looking at the sour face I wore accepting it, hastened to add "Oh! It will probably help with the nausea."

So now, the GI Dr has removed me from the 'take an Ativan to take the edge off when you are depressed or getting anxious' and has put me on 'take an Ativan in the morning and then another in the afternoon for the nausea, and then take a Remeron before bed, for the nausea as well."

This successfully throws a wrench the size of a Buick (words with K's make better punch lines) into my personal control/addiction/drug-assisted-living ethos/pathos.

I will try and outline the most recent act of this drama so we all know where we stand:

1-Freak out first day home from hospital, establish infrequently recurring fear of not being near Drs.
2-Have heart palpitations and/or shortness of breath sometimes for no reason.
3-Actually go into Drs office on an 'off' day with shivering, shallow breath, etc.
4-Drs prove with blood tests that I am fine (for a guy on chemo blah blah blah), suggest maybe it is in my head
5-Ativan is suggested
6-I tell Dr part of why I am against this
7-Dr politely ignores my fears, which is in line with N's take on it
8-We agree to Ativan use: I consider this a defeat.
9-We get Ativan into the house: I consider this a defeat
10-I take an Ativan, and consider it a defeat.
11-The Ativan works exactly as they say it will, making the defeat complete.

The defeat is not from some war with the Drs or N or anyone other than myself. The defeat is personal. Internal.

When I was a kid I coined the term 'inner sentient mind' for myself when referring to what I sensed as a part of my unconscious that was actually running the show, manipulating the conscious parts of me to get to the ends desired by the 'real me' hiding inside. The Inner Sentient Mind would make sure my body language was not too obvious in a conversation. It would look all the way to the end of a relationship that was just starting so that, if and when it ended, I wouldn't get as hurt. It would keep images and recollections nice and near the surface to help me abstain from drinking and drugs my whole life.

It was usually doing me good, but not always. There were times when it would not allow a negative image to leave my head for days. There were times when it would sabotage a relationship. At those times, if I thought of it at all, I had to assume that it thought it knew better than the doofus me driving the truck, so to speak, and leave it at that.

My Inner Sentient Mind was not some separate, psychotic-break piece of me, some devil on my shoulder. It was just a personification I found helpful when trying to understand how my mind and psyche worked.

And now it was back. But this time it actually might have bad intentions.

I hate drugs. I hate dependence. I hate not having control. I have always, to be honest, looked down on people who needed anything by prescription for any length of time longer than getting rid of a cold or recovering from a broken bone. I have, to be honest, always looked down on people who needed pills to fix a mood, or who needed therapy.

Not being able to handle it yourself is, in short, weakness.

I always figured: think it through, get over it, go for a run, do what you need to do and get back on track. C'mon, it can't be that hard, right? Just get your head straight and then do what you need to do.

I think that may be a big part of it for me. I have always been bound by a sense of duty. Not to say that I have always done my duty or that I am any better than anybody else. But I have a sense of duty that has caused me to often be the 'helpful friend' or to work hard finishing a job that doesn't deserve that much effort or any other foolish but duty-bound way I could show that I felt obligated to complete tasks I had started.

And when it came to caring for myself, I always thought 'I can just find out what needs doing, and do what I gotta do, and get it done."

And that rarely meant drugs. Even my wisdom teeth: they gave me painkillers but I didn't need them--or sell them to the local hood who bought them off students. I just had one painful night and then it started getting better and then I was done.

I take an Advil for a muscle strain or a headache, but I always feel a little bad about it, like I am just cheating to make the pain go away faster, and that with hydration or stretching or just some down time I could achieve the same thing without 'help.'

Well, there are demons inside me now--in my version they are giggling or outright laughing--setting me up to get on antidepressants come hell or high water. If I won't take them for happy happy, then by god I am going to have to take them so I stop hurling.

Now I have a Dr prescribing me happy pills solely as a way to not throw up.

And, granted, my dosage is a lot lower than the bummed-out people get. Apparently not hurling is somewhat easier than not wanting to kill yourself and your family, or something like that.

And I am in therapy...but that's a whole post to itself, believe me.

And I don't WANT any of this. In a way, I don't want the drugs and the therapy even more than I don't want chemotherapy, terror, and Leukemia.

And I have a choice, but even I am not bone-headed enough to go Christian-Science on myself and just try to get through it on prayer or pop rocks or whistling a happy tune. I understand the medical necessities.

The GI doc blankly scoffed at the idea that I would get addicted to what he was giving me.

But that's not really what breaks me in all this. I believe that I can and will stop taking each thing as soon as I am allowed. It isn't that.

It isn't that.

It is that I NEED them in the first place.

There's a true me, a perfect replica me, the me I want to be when I grow up, the me I think would be my favorite me if I met him, the me who is the best husband, the best actor, the most dedicated friend and coworker, the me who deserves to be smiled at by kids and dogs.

I keep that me locked in my center, most of the time on a nice pedestal where I can strive to be him.

And these pills...THAT me has to take them, too. I won't get better unless that inner me I cherish and try to keep unchanged by the invading world, until that me pops an Ativan because he's worried about a VO job. That me stumbles back to bed, one hand trailing the wall, because the Remeron makes him feel like a drunk on his midnight calls of nature. That me has to then question himself: am I doing OK, or am I just a little high and feeling OK?

Am I doing OK?

You know what, kiddo, I don't know. I got no clue. Yer on too much stuff, y'see, kid, so I can't see through the fog to see if what I'm seeing is you or just some'a the junk yer on.

Can I take it? Can I handle this disease?

Hey, kid, stuff a sock in it, willya? We'll never know if you coulda hacked the whole ride to hell and back, 'cause you went and popped the pills, dintcha? So we'll always have no friggin idea what the true you woulda been like walking that long walk. Y'copped out, kid, y'took the hand they offered, y'took the ride instead'a walkin'.

Hey, where are you going?

Kid, I got no time for impostors. I spend my time with true people, people who know who they are when they get up and are still that guy when they bed down. People who walk in honest shoes and cut the breeze of life with their upturned faces. Men and women who, all day and every day, are themselves.

So you're saying I'm not like those people? I want to be. I want to be.

Kid, it's a one-shot deal, and you popped the pill...take it easy kid. I gotta go.


And this battle, these voices, this sense of loss or lost opportunities to be true to some ridiculously chivalric notion of self: it's all happening all the time, as I sit here at this computer, as I eat a really very unnerving amount of chicken salad over the past two weeks, as I type excerpts from my wife's phenomenal new book into a script for her premiere transmedia event. As I ride a bike without going anywhere, with the Tour de France on the tv on fast-forward in front of me.

As I sit on the edge of the couch and burst into tears.

As I laugh, every time, at America's Funniest Home Video's montages.

As I sit in my desk chair and weep into my hands.

As I toss my head back, swishing the water to make sure the tiny, tiny Ativan goes down my throat, and then pause to mourn.

As I inhale deeply because that stretches your skin tight over your medi-port and makes it easier for them to sink the needle right the first time.

As I lay my head on the pillow,
prepare to sleep next to N,
and another day of battle, with
myself.

Checking in

Owing to the nature of the last post, I wanted to just make an appearance. Mom and Jim are here, and we have been getting things done and spending time and just existing. N watches over, as ever. I stab myself, and take my pills, and keep on the regimen. Each morning is still..interesting...for me, but there's a pattern that I am beginning to see--or a lack of a pattern, which is oddly comforting when seen as at least a foundation to each day. I have a lot more to say about all of this, but wanted to just pop my head out of the ether.

Hello.

And I also want to say that I was moved to a much much better kind of tears by some emails I got after the last post. Many of us have been bummed out. Have had the rug pulled out from under us. Have been somewhere personalized to each of us but in some way similar to the hole I fall into these days.

And people sent me thoughts, and recollections, and kindness, and care, and, most valuable of all, the image of themselves waving at me from the other side of it all. There were many different versions of "you will come back to yourself," and "there is an end," and "when it happened to me, I had to struggle, but I got through."

Nobody made out that they are going through what I am. And I would not pretend that I am know what anyone else's shadows feel like. But people get scared, and sad, and unlike themselves. And then they get past it.

And they tell me about it, and tell me it'll be alright.

Thank you.

The above picture is of a lake. Isn't it pretty? I think so.

'This indecision's buggin' me'--The Clash

This one's gonna be a little hard to write as well. Even though it is kind of an interesting catharsis, it's...well...it's hard.

I still haven't gotten out of my own way.

The above photo is from a VO job I managed to do yesterday. Terrified, short-of-breath, not in good vocal form, but good enough, apparently, to have them say 'thanks, see ya next time.' N was there and says I was being too hard on myself and that it sounded fine. And she's probably got a point to some extent, but still...it was not my 'A' game.

But that isn't the real issue. The real issue is me. Standing in front of me. Stopping me. From being me.

Maybe this will explain it better. It is now about 6pm. I am finishing off a second bowl of absurdly good tomato/feta/artichoke-heart pasta N threw together.

We have returned from a full and successful day. I am curled in the corner of the couch, typing away.

I did another VO job in the morning. We opened a joint bank account--funny how long some things take to get around to when you marry 11 years after you meet (for a running total of sixteen). But every year since getting hitched we've had a problem depositing our tax refunds, so we figured; might as well.

I went to my agency and recorded an audition.

We went to a movie, where I ate a half pound of chicken salad smuggled in (which in New York translates as 'brought in with me, you got a fucking problem with that?")

I ate a small popcorn, slowly and carefully. I drank a pretty good percentage of a Sierra Mist--they don't have Sprite, and Coke, sadly, is still a little harsh on the throat.

I lined up another possible audiobook gig for the coming weeks. I responded to a slew of emails. I got back in line with my union duties.

We heard word that the announcement of N's Book has made the rounds and is generating good response and sales already.

I walked from 7th and 16th to 5th and 19th to 8th and 22nd to 7th and 25 to 16th and 7th, with lots of stops but without falling over or dying. And even in a bit of rain.

So, sounds like a good day, right? Or at least an average day?

For me that's a fantabulous day of epic proportions the likes of which I have not seen in weeks if not months. It is the equivalent of Lazarus getting a hand out of the stinking grave he was in, then immediately throwing a leg over a new Harley Heritage Softail, and cruising the Sunset Strip like the star of a Motley Crue video...or something.

Now...back up to about 11 this morning. I took an Ativan at 10 in order to be ready for the VO job at noon--I am not comfortable with that need, but have accepted it.

I am curled up in the same corner of the couch. I am weeping like a chubby schoolgirl mocked by a cheerleader. I am almost paralyzed with fear; fear that I will drop dead on the street. I am short of breath, my chest feels three sizes too small, I cannot look my wife in the eye while she tries to talk me down, and all I really want to do is lie flat on the couch.

I firmly believe--firmly like babies believe there's always a boob out there somewhere--that if I lie still enough, the world will forget I'm here and I won't have to do anything.

Day 36, Phase II--welcome to acute self-induced agoraphobia.

Sure, I am on chemo. I am medically poisoned to the Nth degree. My numbers are getting lower every day, my skin is almost translucent, what stubbly hair I have makes me look like an adolescent ostrich, and I couldn't run up a flight of stairs if Rush Limbaugh were chasing me with hot sauce screaming 'pretty-boy barbecue!' at the top of his Vicodin-lined lungs.

But I am not, by any stretch, as close to dead as I feel. It is all a terror I have developed about going out, trying to be normal, trying to interact with the world.

It is as if, as soon as I took the plunge into allowing that I was sick enough to need Ativan to keep me level, I overcompensated in the other direction. Like my psycho-emotional system had its pride hurt and so, to prove it was still supreme, screwed my mentality up in the other direction, convincing me that I am so close to the edge of the great nothing that I can only lie in bed, lie on the couch, or drag my hapless carcass to the hospital on chemo days.

For the past five days I have been crying about as frequently as I have been peeing. And I have not really been able to say why.

What I am trying to say is: I'm depressed. Except, I think this one has a big D.

And that's a tough one to take, for me. It is a slap of empathy I never thought I would feel. It will probably make me a better person in the long run, but right now it just feels humiliating.

I tended to think that most depression was self-indulgent. I tended to think that you got depressed because you weren't active enough, or you weren't getting enough out of a day, or you just weren't doing a good enough job of being a person to stay in a good mood.

I was--to paraphrase Eliot--almost, at times, a dick.

A real dick.

And this flaw was (is) one of my deeper ones. This one goes down into the roots. This sense that you can overcome something as flimsy as anxiety or a dark mood by cranking music, going for a run; hell, just being more like me, fer chrissakes!

That was my thinking. And I have been brought low. And I deserve it. A friend just sent me a quote: "There are two types of people: those who are humble, and those who are about to be."

In the space of three weeks or so I have gone from being addled by fear that I might need a happy pill every once in a while to overcome some panic attacks, to quivering on the couch in the heat of an overwhelming personal pity-party the likes of which I could not have even imagined two weeks earlier.

And N, of course, bore the brunt. Trying different forms of logic and love and therapy-talk every day these long weeks, throwing spaghetti at my flip-outs and seeing what might stick.

And, N, of course, brought me out. She took the intuitive leap required to see that someone needed to yell at me a little, kick my ass a little, and get me outside.
After that, positive momentum slowly built.

I had fears, I had thoughts that maybe these short-breath can-I-do-it? days, these do-you-think-we-should-go-to-the-hospital-today? mornings, these temperature-taking, dry-heaves-on-the-hour evenings were psychosomatic.

My stepfather has said from the get-go: 'During my chemo, I went outside every day, rain or shine, just to do it.'

I nodded, smiled, knew better...dumbass punk kid. Schooled again.

Sure, I suspected there was a mental element to it. I mean, if you are as arrogant as I am and think that your mind is capable of great things, then it must logically follow that you think that your mind can be capable of greatly bad things.

But never did I think I could damage myself this way, get in my way this way, make a mockery of myself this way.

Never. I didn't think I had it in me.

Well--he says, trying to salvage some pride--I do.

Long and short of it: Yes, I am very weakened, sickened, by the chemo, and can only function physically at a level light years below the one I am used to to.

But I am not the slick, gawping baby bird on the hot pavement below the nest my mind has pushed me to believe.

I am not.

That's just Depression over being sick. And I have to work though that.

Left foot. Right foot. Repeat.

Repeat, Goddammit. Repeat.

Always look on the bright side of life (insert whistling)

The past couple of weeks have been pretty tough. The second phase of the protocol is different, but no less abusive or difficult than the first. I have developed some type of GI tract issues that keep me nauseous all the time,and sometimes make me twitch like Chuck Berry with St. Vitus' Dance. The nausea makes eating harder, so I am back down to the lower to mid 140s. I am a bad patient who has taken far too frigging long to learn to eat slowly and in tiny amounts and then allow the food to settle before forging ahead.

But you know what? All that is whining. I was on a rolling bed outside the radiology department in the ER at 1am the other day waiting to get a chest x Ray. In the bed across from me was a little girl, with a pacifier in her mouth and a young mother just barely holding onto the terror standing next to her. As I left my x Ray, I could hear the girl crying. Then a brief pause, and I heard either the mother or nurse explaining something to the little girl.

And then the smallest voice in the world said "ok." She murmured that she'd try in the most plaintive, courageous way. Her mother and or the nurse had obviously told her that she had to lie still or something or the x Ray wouldn't work. And this brave, tiny thing, this sliver of a human, sniffled up her tears, looked them in the eye, and said ok.

What is my fear and pain compared to that? I'll tell you: goddam little.

It is important to keep a positive outlook, while also important to stay realistic. I have had a bad few weeks, and I have let myself slump into them a little. And I shouldn't allow that. Yes, it is ok to be down, to be sad, to need some time to weep or fear or rail against it all. But that cannot be the main highway of my life.

I have been riding the bike more. I have been getting more comfortable with the dry heaves. I have watched my numbers grow back to an almost regular level before the second half of this phase started. There are good things in the bad things. I have to know that; always know it.

And so, without further ado, I present you with a Brief and Terribly Incomplete List of Really Wonderful Shit:

1. Canine Face-surfing Intermission:
Our dog, Lugnut, passed away about a year and a half ago, but was and is responsible for a huge percentage of the joy in our lives.
Lugnut liked to face-surf. This genius way of passing time and traversing carpets or lawns consists of getting a bit of a running start, maybe two steps, and then letting his front legs literally collapse beneath him, slamming his cheek and muzzle down into the carpet or grass. His back legs never stop moving, and he plows his schnoz along the ground, driving his back legs like a motor, tail whirling madly with delight.
He usually ends a run across the carpet or lawn by kicking his back legs out so that his muscular body whumps the ground and he can twist and wriggle onto his back, teeth bared in happiness, tongue gravity-yanked out the side of his mouth and flopping merrily on the ground next to his eye.
Then: Intermission.
He just freezes. It is as if the joy of a good face-surf is almost too much to bear, like 'how can life be so good and generous that I am able to rip my face across the carpet whenever I want? Can this glory be real?'
In order for his dog brain to run through these thoughts of a just and loving world, nothing else can be happening. So he stops.
Pin legs straight in the air, taut pit bull body torqued slightly from his last wriggle, one earn hanging open and the other draped across his face, he freezes, just a ball of potential energy, black fur, and rawhide breath.
The whole world stops with him. It is his prayer, his tithe, his acknowledgment of life's great glory.
One second, maybe three. Frozen In place on the ground, one back leg lolling
Slightly to the side.
And then it is over, and he has leaped to his feet, spun around, and is preparing for the next pass. Seeking that joy and knowing he will find it.

2. Nectarines

3. Mob-rules harmony.
Though this happens with any number of genres or bands, I will use Iron Maiden. One of their biggest hits, 'Aces High,' has a moment near the end where the lead singer takes his voice to it's highest place. The second half of the last time he says 'high' is a triumphant screaming wail at the thrill of music.
And, when you go to a concert, you and fifteen thousand or so of your closest friends are invited to sing along, to stretch your throat muscles and reach for that same impossibly high-note with him.
And you do.
At the crucial moment, Bruce Dickinson rips the mic away from his own mouth and points it at you, the mob. You know it is coming, many of you have been trying to control your breathing since the last verse because you wanted to get it right.
And when fifteen thousand fans all reach for that same lofty perch on the treble clef, an amazing thing happens: they get there.
Despite the fact that it is almost scientifically impossible for you all to be anywhere near the actual note, the fact that you are all wailing together, spread out over the floor and seats of a hockey arena or amphitheater, and the final product, aided by the lead singer hitting the note as he should, is a tsunami of guttural falsetto and adrenalized roaring that, in the aggregate, combine to BE the note you all sought.
In screaming together, in socialist howling, you achieve the impossible. You are all, for that one glorious second, the lead singer of the band. A smashing cloud of sound rises above the stage, the fans, the lights and the lasers, and becomes an aural manifestation of the power of music, the communal dream made real. You are rock and roll.

4. The smell of hot pavement after the first wash of rain.

5. If I am on the couch, convalescing (which, I have learned comes from the Latin for 'watching Tour de France Coverage on DVR'), and N is in the bed, working, we can pretty much see each other down the hall whenever we look. And there are many many times when we look up in time to see the other looking up just then, too.

No words needed. Maybe a small wave, maybe the frozen stance of a head not running away, maybe just two seconds out of a day.

And then we're back to whatever were were doing, but stronger.


So there you have it: a bunch of good stuff.

A reprieve, a longer sentence, a day in the country

I'll try to do this in order.

Wednesday was uneventful. I didn't feel great but I didn't feel horrible. The dry-gagging trick was a recurring nuisance, but it didn't stop me. I finished the audiobook, using the words and the performance as a way to hide from how bad I was starting to feel as the day progressed--just tired and unable to escape the churning stomache. But I got through it and suspect there might actually be a good performance in there of the last hundred pages or so because my focus had an aspect of survivalism to it. We'll see.

Mom arrived Wednesday night to help N through the next Dr appointments and whatever would come of them.

N has been battling a sinus infection and fatigue--gee, Cap'n, I wonder why?--and it has culminated in her being on Cipro--the Muhammad Ali of antibiotics--for a lovely, stomach-scraping ten day stretch to try and rid her of the baddies that have taken advantage of her concern for and care of me to attack her.

Thursday morning we all hied our way to the Hospital. My blood was taken and we waited.

My numbers were not high enough to continue treatment. Good news/bad news.

I pretty much went to the bad news side of things first: shocker. N and Mom were more positive.

All this means is that my White Blood count was not quite high enough to justify hitting me with the second month of Phase II just yet: they give me a week to get healthier before they beat the shit out of me again. There's a sadistic medical logic to it.

My platelets and hemoglobin were in great shape, and the Protocol actually marks Day 29 as a possible hold for recovery, so non of this was out of line. Just a negative result in terms of everything going perfectly from stem to stern.

And I didn't miss by much; everyone seemed happy with my progress, if that's the right word.

And in fact, I was not all that bummed to put off the Cytoxan for an extra week, because I have been feeling the long-term drain and weakness of Phase II rather severely of late.

That's all well and good, but to me it just read as "your prayed-for exit date just got a week further off."

I had this Christmas-present idea in my head, counting the 8 months from diagnosis. Not super-specific, but still a nice time to shoot for. N has been more realistic and less married to dates and just says 'January' when talking about all of it ending.

And, hell, we all know that it could pop earlier or later and I could need to go the bone marrow route and all that, so any date is intensely arbitrary.

But still, grasping at straws beneath a brave smile has become something of a sad, tiring habit.

So I am down in the dumps, even while I understand that I have a week without new chemo to take advantage of.

And that's what we do. Friday mid-morning, before the July 4 traffic gets hyper-stupid, we take the Escape and...well...escape. N drives, I sit in the passenger seat trying with all my might not to hurl, Mom sits behind me, and up we go to Harriman State Park an hour or so outside the city.

The West Side Highway traffic is pretty tough, and the stop-and-go pushes my capacities to the limit, but I do not throw up.

Once out of the city, on The Palisades Parkway, the smoother flow decreases the nausea, and I put in a CD I dug up for the ride. I do not tell N what it is, and it only takes three songs for her to recognize our wedding mix: we over-planned our wedding to a ridiculous extent, and made five Cd's of compulsively/scientifically planned songs for the reception: the level of overkill was hilarious, and we only used two of the five before it got too late and the party ended. But the Cd's are still pieces of work.

Second or third song is Lyle Lovett, "Flyswatter/Ice Water Blues." I am weeping like a soap opera starlet in her retirement scene. Trying to sing quietly, tears streaming down my face and into the Baltimore Ravens blanket cushioning my head from the passenger window.

But it isn't roids, it is just emotion. Some of it is the beautiful wedding memory, some of it is just that it is a gorgeous song done just right.

But a lot of it is connected to why I haven't listened to music much. When you are fighting like this, when each day tests something, the emotions just don't get a chance to settle back into their normal channels, away from the surface. And for somebody who loves music, who is moved by music, it is, frankly, too dangerous and too tiring to strum the heartstrings like that all the time.

But this was my mom and my girl and a trip to the country, so fuck it, lets stay a little raw-nerved and see what happens.

And as a side-effect, the music and singing along and trying (sometimes horribly) to find harmonies all serve to banish the nausea for at least the duration of the ride.

We get to the park, and I find the little lake-side parking area I remembered, and we eat some homemade sandwiches and have some chips and seasoned avocado and other tasty sundries.

I am still pretty beat up, but Mom and N take good care of me, and N and I take a bit of a walk, spend some time watching a goose family preen themselves to sleep (which seems so beautiful and like something I would kill to be able to do these days).

We all rest a bit on our own, we spend some time together, we pose by the water--see above--and a good time is had by all. I am never fully free of how bad I feel, but feeling bad out there in sun and shadow and with frog-song and lake-smell is so vastly superior to feeling the same way in the apartment that I consider myself lucky the whole time.

I am overcome by emotion and frustration once or twice, murmuring or clenched-teeth-growling "I just wish this were over. I just wish I didn't feel this way." But those moments of weakness are outnumbered exponentially by a beautiful afternoon I am cherishing as I experience it, and am cherishing still.

We stop for gas and gum--gum helps with carsickness because it stops your mouth from freezing in the not-gonna-hurl pose--at a store right outside the park. I freak out three kids playing catch in a field behind the gas station: one gets sent long for a pass and, as he pulls in the ball and hurtles past the dumpster at the corner of the field, he almost runs into me having a nice little dry-heave in the shade. An odd "Sorry," "No problem" ensues, and then he hurries off and I head back for the car.

Traffic is very light as we are reverse-commuting from the July 4 hordes, and we are home in good time to watch Jeopardy as a family and eat something, I forget what. But I kept it and everything else down that day and each day since.

And each day since have been riding the trainer a little bit while watching the Tour De France coverage--I have been waiting for these DVR'd trainer-viewings for weeks now and am very happy they are here.

Mom and I went to Best Buy to see if we could get the DVD-burner I broke fixed...and we did! How's that for strange in this modern, expendable culture? The Geek Squad guy took a few minutes, fixed it, and sent us on our way. No charge.

We walked through a street fair to get home and I got a roasted corn on the cob on the way back--thoughtlessly not calling N to see if she wanted one; and she would have.

Mom got an earlier bus home Saturday so she could get back to Jim who has been patiently loaning her out, and I think I slept 12 hours last night.

I have yet to feel 'good,' but it is slightly less 'bad' each day. And it is just the stomach, just the semi-permanent nausea I am, sadly, kinda getting used to.

But I have more strength. The 30 minutes I did on the bike during the Tour Prologue through Rotterdam was the hardest I have 'ridden' yet, and there was sweat pouring and my legs actually ached a bit afterward, and I think I am doing OK. We'll see what hurts in the morning, but it is really nice to be tired because of effort and not just the treatment.

Hopefully very little will happen over the next few days, and it is extremely likely that this Thursday I will be back on track and fire up the Cytoxan and Ara-C and 6mp and the whole party will start again.

But today is America's birthday--at least for selfish white people. So I will place my face into the sun and look forward, to America's next birthday.

And mine.

Forward. Just forward.

Happy 4th.