There are vague landscapes in which I see myself ending up, all of which involve food, recently, more than anything else. I've been in a pattern of losing weight and no one is terribly happy about it. The nutritionist, the oncologist, the radiation oncologist, the speech therapist--all of them end their chats with me on the note of gaining weight, eating more, taking more in. I agree! The problem is that I've come to hate the Nutren supplement, don't really love Ensure any more than that, want a peanut butter sandwich more than anything else and am fighting nausea to boot.
This is chemo day, and at noon, I've yet to eat and I'm not terribly unhappy about that-- I'm certain that my team would be...but it just happened. I have it with me, I'll get to it, but I'm kind of filling up on fluids, fluids, fluids. I'm working on other ideas of things to mash and send down the tube, and even toying with baby food (can I do that? it looks so gross), weight gain shakes and dreaming.
Image has popped up a lot to me these past few days as a topic, too--another vague landscape in which I still imagine myself as I was in preference to seeing how I am. I can, of course, stand in front of a mirror and see what has happened--quite easily, scar marks, nipple in wrong position, jaw still fat with swelling. I think of this vision in reference to what I've always seen of cancer on television--inevitably a woman, wearing a headscarf, being both terribly upset and terribly brave. Able to speak eloquently, eat, and function as any human would, just with the burden of a killer sitting upon her breasts, or ovaries, or--if it's man--his lungs.
No one should expect any reality from television--this after all is a medium filled with black men and women who act like it's the 1940's, gay people who are court jesters, women who are sarcastic and loveless, hispanics who clean. Cancer patients who are brave, looking unceasingly into the bleak future they are destined to inhabit....
Part of my recent digestion has been to fill that future with pictures I'd rather see--me with a five pound weight doing curls, me with a ten pound weight during curls, me with a fifteen pound weight doing curls...me, in my smart new lime green jacket that Scott bought for me in Switzerland having a jog to the Farmer's Market at the Embarcadero. The other day, walking downtown to do some shopping, Scott mentioned how well I was walking--indeed, they can remove a bone from your leg and you can, eventually, forget that they've done so.
I miss the spontaneity of parenthetical remarks, observations upon the passing scene, catty commentary on what someone is wearing. Lately, I've been particularly catty about a commercial in which women are dancing, doing the twist over the fact that their vaginas aren't leaking all over the place because of a pad, at least I think that's what it is. This commercial has fascinated me because the white woman in it is gracefully swaying around, but they make the two black women break out the Zulu stomp over their leakless grace. Like those brave, upset cancer patients, these women are dancing in the mold that just won't break.
I am in the midst of breaking some of these molds--the first? Cancer blogger who is only upbeat. I like to be real, just not television style.
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