Thursday, April 16, 2009

Can't sleep so I might as well write this.

Still wallowing. I now understand why you don't want to get a cold while taking chemo. It's awfully hard to get better. You can't take any medicine. You can't sleep. So you just lay and be miserable. Eventually the body has to come to the rescue but it's taking a lot longer than if I weren't on chemo. 

Meanwhile the lumps in my chest haven't gone down a ton. Francine is a little smaller. Carlo moved a little. The Frankenstein bolt in my neck is buried under skin and whatever else lives in my neck. You can't see it but if you felt around over there, you'd find it pretty quickly. If you did feel around my neck and the rest of my body I wouldn't be turned on. Not just because I'm married but the plumbing doesn't work too well when you're on chemo.

The good news is that my chest and collarbone feel pretty beat up. Not the lumps. Everything around the lumps. I don't think there are many nerves on the lumps. Generally, I take this as good news. 

Tomorrow I get my labs drawn. The lady who usually does it is from Ethiopia. During most days, I rarely talk to Americans. My nurse is from the Philipines. My doctor is from Syria. My stem cell doctor is from Italy. The lady who draws my blood is from Ethiopia. The lady who changes my dressing is from Mexico. The guy who helps give me chemo is from El Salvador. The guy who drives the shuttle is from Euritheria or something like that (It's a small country in northeastern Africa but it sounds an awful lot like a lady's naughty parts. I didn't say that to him, though. But it does. If I were them I'd change their name to something that sounds nicer. Like Mannyland.).  The lady at the front desk is from Puerto Rico. The maids are from some Latin American country. The guy who drives me to the airport is from The Netherlands. The guy who drives me to the airport when the first guy can't is from Turkey. 

And they all love going to the rodeo. Really. The rodeo is here every year for a month and it's the thing to do. Many will dress up at work and go right from there so you get to see them in the cowboy costumes. And believe it or not, the ones who really do it up good with the bright-colored, badly fitted shirt and dangerously bulging Wrangler jeans are the foreigners. I ain't crappin ya. Many hispanic but really a good mix. Surprising. But the one thing I learned during my time studying abroad in college is foreigners have a hard time identifying what's cheesy. What makes America the most dominant country in the world and will continue to do so long after the economy is overtaken by the Chinese? Americans know what's cheesy. In fact, we dictate what's cool and everyone else follows.  

Enclosed is a picture of Matt Damon. I guess he's cool. He's with some hot chick and looks all sincere. So that should work for coolness. 

2 comments:

  1. It's a good thing you work at such an ethnically diverse agency, otherwise I could see how the multicultural atmosphere down there might have been a tough adjustment.

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  2. I think Matt Damon is pretty cool, too.

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