I have spent the last few weeks in recovery, leaving the hot zone (the still radioactive period of 2 weeks or so after treatment when everything is still glowing from all the zapps and chems), and entering what I now think of as the fitful zone.
Fitful because I still truly don't have a definitive answer as to how I've done--a 45 minute MRI was cut short by me because I can't lie flat for 45 minutes without choking on effluvia that has nowhere to go but my throat, and because the machine I was being assaulted in at UCSF was the loudest, most obnoxious, most ear splitting MRI I've ever encountered. The little ear plug pads they gave me only allowed me to escape with a migraine instead of permanent brain damage.
So I have decided in the interim to just think the best and get on with it--there seems no other logical plan of action. This, though, is hard to do with lymph edema. Yes, on my horizon now is a return to the chipmunk cheeks of lymph fluid trapped in my face and swelling my contours out like I'm mylar and it's gas. So lately I can't speak well, open my mouth wide or pretend that I'm exactly getting better.
Am I sick of this shit? Hell to the yes. Just one linear path from bottom of the barrel to at least mid-barrel would be welcome. But even a swollen up face is not sufficient punishment--I'm anemic too! yes, good lord, yes--in addition to destroying cancer cells they apparently sufficed to render my bone marrow almost useless in making red blood cells. The net effect is that scratching one's butt check is more work than I have energy for in a day.
So, I have had blood transfusions and Procrit shots (those back of the arm shots hurt), and iron supplements and god knows what sort of voodoo to right my ship of state. Has it worked? Well, the day after transfusions I wanted to go jogging, but 4 days after, I thought better of it. One day after Procrit and I wanted to clean the bathroom, but then two days after I couldn't care less...the jury is out.
I spend my time lately with our new dog, Madoc, and with guilt at not walking him enough. In public, when I can't avoid going out, I pass snarky notes on my phone to Scott about the world around me and laugh as much as possible. Oddly, I'm not depressed. Frustrated, definitely. I feel like my face is a mask and any suggestion that I'll return to normal eating or speaking is just some sort of cruel hoax. I still watch food porn on the Food Network and still tear up a little when the ice cream cake commercials come on, but less than before, as they are remoter than ever right now.
I've wondered if I'd continue blogging, and my original intent was not to do so past the end of active treatment--but yesterday after passing a snarky note on my phone to Scott in the grocery store, he suggested I should continue occasionally updating what happens as we move zig zag into the future. Before you ask, the note--and it made him laugh--was about my frustration at being offered food samples in the store--and it involved the word "bitch" and it involved the statement: "does it fucking look like I can eat?"
As far as summation, that's a pretty good one. I have been profoundly changed by what has happened to me, but if you were judging upon action, it might not look so profound. I'm still vulgar, I'm still sarcastic, I'm still me. The change is somewhere on the boundaries between how I dream, how I hope and how I live. The first is bigger, the second is smaller and the third is wiser. Somewhere between them all--and I'm truly betting on it--is a porridge of a consistency, a temperature and (more importantly) edibility--that will render all this finding of it a curiosity of an ill begotten past.
