Of course I get cancer and have to go through chemo at the same time the McRib is released for only a limited time. Man, life sucks.
OK, that's a bit hyperbolic, but the frustration with eating foods I enjoy is definitely being felt.
I haven't updated in a while, and that's because last week was my marathon chemo session - five days in a row, approximately five hours each day, non-stop chemo action. I tried to write a blog entry about it late last week, but I felt nauseous even writing about what I was feeling. For some reason, although I've never been one that's heavily dependant on my senses, when it comes to chemo it's absolutely brutal trying to recall the smells, sounds and tastes of everything. I get a whiff of the blood thinner, or alcohol or even the soap that they use in every freaking hospital bathroom and I just immediately feel sick. I feel like a bloodhound with a super-sensitive nose that has been tied up inside of a Long John Silvers. No variety here...nothing but fried fish and hushpuppies, and it all smells like garbage.
The weird thing is, I haven't even gotten sick yet. I've been close...on Thursday, before they put the needle in my port, I put in a watermelon Jolly Rancher to help me forget about the smells and tastes involved with the chemo and I had to spit it out immediately...I nearly got sick at that moment. That one hard candy triggered some Pavlovian reaction where my body knew when I took a watermelon Jolly Rancher, my body was about to get pumped full of poison. I assume Chad Kroeger's body goes through the same thing when he yells out "Hey *city name*, we're Nickelback. Are you ready to rock?"
So, last week got progressively worse as the week went on until Friday, at which time I went to treatment, listened to my iPod nearly the entire time to drown out the sound of the infusion pump, sprayed cologne on my stocking cap before going in so I had something to put up to my nose when I knew I was going to deal with strong smells from meds and such, and went home to sleep away the rest of the day. Yep...I carried around a cologne-sprayed item like I was in Shakespearean times, and that's because my body is now a smell factory.
I never really realized how much my body identifies smells. In the past, before going on a vacation, my wife and I would do what most people do...go out and buy soap and deodorant because we don't want to be all sweaty in a different location, and like most people, we have an irrational fear that the hotel we're traveling to might be the one hotel in the world that doesn't supply soap and shampoo. We found out after doing this a couple of times that we tended to buy new-smelling deodorants or soaps, and after returning from our vacation we would associate those smells with our trips. That finally hit me after sitting in the chair on Thursday, pulling my stocking cap down over my face and immediately being reminded of Mexico for some reason. It wasn't until I got home later that night that I realized the soap I used on my bald head that morning was the same type I used on our vacation...and that I hadn't used it in a long time since that morning. Surprisingly, it actually helped quite a bit...I was thinking about sandy beaches and fish tacos during a time that I usually try not to think about Burger King (which is something that seriously makes me nauseous now...not fun considering my brain knows that and tries to test my nausea's strength with this knowledge).
This weekend was about par for the course on recovering from the marathon week. Friday I made up a batch of some good soup, which always seems to do well with my stomach. Saturday I watched a "Top Chef" marathon for a good chunk of the afternoon and after getting in a mood to cook, ended up making Hamburger Helper. Yep...that's the only thing that sounded good and didn't allow me to chop, dice or double-broil anything. That's like watching Picasso paint for six hours and then deciding you're going to make something out of dried macaroni and glitter. On the plus side, it allowed me to eat half a pound of food, which is something I haven't accomplished at any point this week.
By now, I feel like I'm pretty close to normal again. I found out that the entire trigger with my nausea is what metaphorically seems like a metallic-tasting drip that is constantly going down the back of my throat, tainting my saliva and anything I eat with this horrible flavor. When I'm going through my marathon week, this taste is stronger, and outside of my marathon week it's much weaker and nearly non-existent. It makes eating, and especially drinking water, a major challenge. It makes me feel like I'm killing any food I eat right now...if I eat a McRib now and associate it with that chemo-ey taste, it will be dead to me forever, and I just don't know if I can live in a world where I'm not brought a great deal of barbecuey joy every 9-12 months. There's a third-world problem for you...worried about your cancer treatment taking away the joy of a semi-annual promotional fast food sandwich.
So, here's the summary: I'm bald (I had the wife take a razor to my skull last night so I wouldn't look, as she so delicately put it, "cancer-ridden." Washing my bald head now feels like I'm petting a fish underwater), I'm full of food that's not gourmet or McRibbed, I'm sleeping a ton, I'm drinking very little, and I'm missing more work than I ever have (I missed two days last week. For me, that's quite a bit...but I do get a kick out of calling in "cancer sick"). Four weeks down, five more to go...with only one more "marathon week" and four "one-treatment weeks," which should be a cakewalk. We'll see how I end this whole treatment thing...running through a finish line or dragging myself across with a dainty hankerchief up to my nose. One of those sounds slightly manlier than the other, and with my "Mr. Clean haircut," that's kind of the option I'd like to choose.
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