New Normal, Old Bullshit

The chronology of my new chemo routine is that every 3 weeks I have big infusion day--taxol, carboplatinum and erbitux, which takes about 6 hours. I had that yesterday on the 12th.

For the two weeks in between, I spend an hour getting erbitux, a much lighter load of infusion.

Having had two of the 6 hour infusions, the new normal is that the day after I have one of those, I'm a puking mess. My throat is invaded by gunk, my nose runs, my stomach rebels. That, I'm telling you, is not the way to start a Friday the 13th.

My oncologist, the frustrated comedian Dr. Kramer, does believe this combo is working--but I'm too close to the patient to tell, frankly. Being aware of every quirk and illness twerp that shakes its insouciant ass in my face, I have trouble separating its reality from mine. They seem blended--as if I were never anything but cancerous, as if I had never had another life.

Recently, I've found my old life fading away in ways I couldn't imagine before I started this awesomely bad trip. My food love is fading. My desire for a Payday bar, a Blizzard, an ice cream cake, a hamburger, a steak, some lasagna, truffle fries--far less powerful incentives these days. As complications mount and outcomes slip further into the future, I'm less likely to want and more likely to passively accept.

It was this way the other night when I made meatballs and marinara sauce for Scott. Of course I "wanted" it, and I smell every food item that comes into this house as a reminder of what was, but I didn't WANT it. Instead I cracked open the stupid Nutren 2.0 container and poured that vanilla shit straight into my stomach. I didn't whimper. I didn't complain.

I don't understand, often, why in a room full of people getting infusions of chemo, I'm the guy who can't eat or talk--the other patients having had cancers that at least didn't rob them of these human activities--eating and talking--that form about 90% of life--or at looks and feels that way when you can't do them.

I'm still jealous of those people, but even that primal emotion is fading, replaced by a weary sort of acceptance that the universe is punishing me for something awful I've done and when the universe spanks, you might as well simply bend over.

I'm finding success in shrinking some of the fluid build up in my face through lymphedema therapy, and I enjoy going to see Fiona, the therapist, and watching the tea tea outside of the window as she retrains the fluid and lymph system on how to drain when the old pathways are gone and the new ones are unknown. She's managed to shrink the face measurement by seven centimeters so far, and that has lifted my spirits. I look like a freak, yes, but less like one.

Yet even that therapy has, potentially, opened up new complications, such as new fissures in my reconstructed throat, a tear in my surgical flap in the mouth--not the therapy directly, but perhaps the pressures from wearing a facial compression mask, or from guiding the lymph juice gusher through new channels....

Or maybe just the coincidence of the body heaving a sigh and letting go of things it wanted to--like staying together, in one piece. Perhaps like me, the fight hasn't left it so much apathetic as it has simply left it tired. Maybe I use the word acceptance when I mean resignation, but I don't think so.

I simply don't want to be upset when another date passes me by which I had hoped to eat, and find I still can't. When I've wanted to jog, but realize that's much further away. When I hoped to weight 140 and find it hard to pass 130.

When I've wanted normal, and normal just won't settle on me.