The timing of the fourth round of chemo, just a few days before Christmas, sucked. I was the sickest during the height of home bound festivities. Chemo day itself is not hard. After chemo is hard. Like the unexpected (and rarely talked about) challenges after childbirth, the after affects of chemo are less known, wildly varied, and involve a lot of fluids.
I’d been overdoing it for the holiday for weeks; keeping busy keeps my mind off the illness. Making good things happen for the kids keeps the darker thoughts at bay. Sometimes, in the early morning when I was moving that damn Elf, despite my efforts to suppress them, my thoughts turned to cancer and not wrapping paper.
Why are there so many types of diarrhea?
Is this what my bare head felt like when I was a newborn?
Just how many red blood cells does a person need?
Why do I crave a pineapple upside down cake?
Why did no one tell me about the bloody noses?
Someone needs to make nice plastic flatware.
Contacts, contact + readers, glasses, glasses then readers, back to contacts. Will I ever see right again?
My fingertips are numb. Or are they just cold?
I really didn’t ever need to see my fupa in that bald condition.
Why does it take all my energy to text someone back?
If I just stop going to chemo and pretend this never happened, what then? (Being mortally ill without ever feeling sick is very very strange)
I really don’t want to draw my eyebrows in again today.
How many more Christmases do we get?
Ok, time to think about something else and pack the ornaments and tears away. Goodbye Elf. It’s been fun, but it’s over. It’s not you, it’s me.