Day 58
General status update:
Hair: seems to be falling out less than it was, leading me to wonder
if I have been suffering from Imaginary Alopecia. A LOT came out after I washed
it, but now it seems much as usual. Trying not to obsess. Also trying not to obsess
about trying not to obsess. Very scared of washing it again.
Nausea demon: He’s effectively got a week free now, until FEC4, so he’s
working on his OU Diploma in Counselling, and trying to get a little practice
in with his fellow demons. Can’t see it working, myself.
Chemo Muse: she has the best withering stare in the universe, bar none
(she is the love-child of Medusa, and Chemosh, the God of the Moabites, after
all), and this combined with her Dame Edith Evans as Lady Bracknell-style ‘Counselling?
You think I need COUNSELLING?’ retort to the Nausea Demon has given me the best
laugh I’ve had in ages. Our DVD player is malfunctioning at the moment, you
see, so boxed sets are off the agenda, and I’m having to create all my
entertainment inside my own head.
Chemo Brian: He always likes to please, so is letting the Nausea Demon practice
on him, but I’m not all sure that releasing Chemo Brian’s Inner Child is a very
good idea. His Eternal Adolescent who, as is customary with Baby-Boomers, has
been ruling the roost for the last 40 years, might not like this at all.
Stomach,
internal condition of: I’ve now stopped taking the
anti-nausea drugs for this cycle, but the effects of the Chemo Nano-Rats are
still lingering – the inside of my stomach, although no longer painful, just
feels residually toxic, much as if it’s being rinsed out every morning with
that stuff they use to unblock drains. It never goes away, and I’m wondering
how long it will last after the end of FEC6. The side effects of chemo can
continue for some time after the treatment has ended – you haven’t finished
with chemo, as someone remarked to me recently, until chemo has finished with
you…
Fatigue/weakness: Getting better. I took a walk this morning which might almost
be described as brisk. Have GOT to get out there and start building up my
strength again before the next dose of chemo. One of the many less attractive features
of chemo for breast cancer is that people tend to put on weight, probably from
a combination of the steroids, eating to combat nausea, lack of physical
activity because of the weakness and fatigue, and eating to combat the existential
despair caused by all the other things. I always thought cancer made you thin. It seems not, in the early
stages, anyway, and the later stages we don’t really want to think about, do
we?
Anxiety level (1-10): We’re ALL DOOMED, so what is there to be anxious about? It’s only a
matter of timing.
State of mind: trapped in a hall of distorting mirrors, and bouncing off the
walls, screaming. Otherwise, perfectly chipper, thanks..
I took a day off from blog-writing today; after
yesterday, the balance of my mind was a little disturbed.
I needed to do practical things, to remind myself that
life goes on: go for a walk in Holland Park in the cold winter sunshine, and
watch the dogs going on with their doggy life; go to Waitrose to buy an exceedingly
obscure cut of meat so I could make Nigel Slater’s latest recipe for a warming
casserole, slow-cooked in red wine, with which to greet R tonight when he comes
home exhausted after what will have been a very long day.
So I did those practical things, got moving again, as
you always have to do, and I thought about W.H.Auden’s poem, and poor Icarus in
the painting, his legs disappearing unnoticed into the water as those all around
get on with their lives.
About
suffering they were never wrong,
The
Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its
human position; how it takes place
While
someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How,
when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For
the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children
who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a
pond at the edge of the wood: They
never forgot
That
even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow
in a corner, some untidy spot
Where
the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches
its innocent behind on a tree.
In
Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite
leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have
heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But
for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it
had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water;
and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something
amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had
somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
