Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Post Poison Thoughts

Took the poison yesterday. That means one full treatment is in the can. I'd like to thank the makers of Diet Sprite for keeping me from puking. As Bono says, "My body is begging to get back." Of course, Bono was talking about something much more poetic than chemo like ending world hunger or something having to do with Africa. With his new songs, I can't really tell who he's talking about but I know they are well-deserving. 

I'm pretty tired today. And fat. In the next one and a half weeks, I'm only going to get more tired and more fat as the poison drops my white blood cells and other things chemically related. As I think I mentioned before, the plan is to get a treatment one week and then another the next. That counts as one whole treatment. I don't know why two treatments count as one treatment. But it does and I've already asked too many questions to ask about this one. 

A cancer patient is told by everyone, every blog and every book to ask many questions. But the reality is people get tired of you. Really, we all know what a three-year old is like, right? Or a client. So it's actually best to conserve questions. Find out some of the easy stuff online. Then ask the important questions like, "Am I going to live?" 

Anyway, after the first two treatments which is for some reason called one treatment, I rest one week and start up again after that. If all goes well, I'll start the Stem Cell transplant in May. My math may be a little off here but I think that's about right. 

The big question I ask myself every couple of minutes is, "Is this working?" It's early but I think so. I had two lumps on my left chest, one Frankenstein-like bolt coming out of my neck and a lump on my right side. The ICE did a good job of reducing the Frankenstein bolt. The other lumps are melting, melting away. Why, just the other night, I heard a terrible, shrieking voice say, "If it wasn't for you and that dumb dog..." and I thought, "My dumb dog is in Chicago and who is this witch talking to?"

Houstonians are fat and slow. When I leave Room 440 at the Rotary House I feel like I am in a world of slow motion. It's just as well since I'm going half speed myself. I have free time but no energy to fill it. I try to get one or two things done in a day. Tomorrow is laundry. My clothes smell like walleye. I looked up walleye in the Spanish to English dictionary online and the word is "walleye". Did that just to make sure the cleaning staff wasn't too disgusted by my dirty clothes. If they were, walleye would have certainly come to mind. 

My biggest frustration is having all this free time and not being able to fill it. Or to waste it. The Rotary House has a bar. Yeah, I know. It closes at nine. The Rotarians don't rock out. The Rotary House also has a pool, hot tub and work out room. Can't use anything with water and as for the work out room, I did run a little under a mile on the treadmill the other day. But I paid for it that night. I wonder if Hemmingway or Faulkner had cancer and were stuck at the Rotary House, would they be writing a great book? My answer is, of course, no. They were both angry, slobbering drunks. They would have been at the Rotary House bar way past nine, cancer be damned. 

Enclosed is a picture of Eric Blair, aka George Orwell. A great writer who wasn't an angry, slobbering drunk. He would've written something real swell while here. Maybe "Animal Farm II, Return to Animal Farm Mountain." 

2 comments:

  1. Poison, GNR, heavy drinking, hot-tubs... sounds like backstage at a hair-metal concert.

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  2. Don't knock angry, slobbering drunken writing until you've tried it. How do you think our latest Bally spot got done?

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