Chemo.....yet again

I had chemo on Thursday. Yuck, Yuck, Yuck. I hate chemo. First you can sleep, and then you can't sleep. I know it's only chemo lite.....but it still plays havoc with my system. No I’m not losing my hair – it just thins a bit. Chemo lite makes you crave food, whereas chemo hard makes you throw up food. Hmmm…..which sounds better?




One of the big side effects of this chemo is that my bones and joints are now killing me…..the pain is so intense for about 4 to 5 days. It’s sort of like polyjuice, it grows bones. (Harry Potter term) Just think, I’ll never have osteoporosis. Who knows, maybe I’ll start growing taller. If I get real lucky, maybe my bones will glow in the dark after I’m gone.



Don’t tell anyone, but it’s really hard. I’m trying really hard to be the all around good sport and super woman mom even though I have cancer. Right now, I have tears quietly falling gently down my cheeks. I’m wrapped up in my warm robe, shielding me from the cold night. I close my eyes and try to think of anything other than the pain, sunshine, running with my children, baseball. However, it hurts to lie down, it hurts to stand up, it hurts to sit down. My fingers, my tailbone, my ribs, my toes, they feel as if large knives are being jabbed into them. I’m not allowed to cry anymore in from of my family. They get too upset. So I wait until night, after they all have gone to bed. Then all the sorrow pours out of me.



I know that this part of my journey moves very slowly. And I’ll be a good sport about it whenever you see me. However, at night, when everyone is asleep…

Sleep, and lack there of.....

Okay, stupid question. Why am I never asleep at one a.m. in the morning? I know it’s a rhetorical question. But this lack of sleep is killing me. Laughing out loud…….actually rolling on the floor in hysterics. The shooting gun is the alarm that is going to blast at 5:30 a.m., less than five hours from now. (Although, I really sort of pretend to sleep until 6:45 a.m. – the early bell is for Rainer to get up and at em – the second bell is for me to haul my but out of bed and try to somehow cajole my two little ones out of their warm, snuggly beds……you know school for them……and who knows what for me now that I don’t work anymore……but that is another sorted tale to tell at a later time).


Right now, the orchestra is playing. Let’s see we’ve got Rainer on the trumpet, playing loudly the Snore Be-Bop. We’ve got my two dogs – one, who snores, the other dog who just breathing in and out in stereo. I can hear the refrigerator click on downstairs – it should be good for a whoosh or so for a half hour. Even my laptop fan seems to be chiming in every now and then.

I don’t know where I’m going with this. And I guess that’s what not sleeping is all about. You don’t know why you are awake. You just are. Your mind is flowing with nonsensical thoughts – hmmmm, the lottery is up to $133 million, maybe I should break down and buy a ticket, but that would cost a dollar or two, which is something I don’t have these days, I wonder what I would with the money if I won. Immediately, the accountant in me wakes up and starts calculating, let’s see I would probably get X% of $133 million, then after I paid the IRS 50% of that I’d have Y. I’d pay my mortgage off just to get rid of those pesky bankers, and hire someone to mow my lawn so I would never have to ask Rainer to do it again, of course I’d buys some of my crystal goblets for myself because even though I ask for them every year for Christmas I never get them, I’d buy my parents a condo so they’d be forced to live near me. Thoughts of green lawns, remind me of sunshine and warm faces lifted upwards, weeds to pull and hoping flowers will bloom. Of course, dreaming about flowers blooming, IRS and mortgages immediately pulls out the worry wart in me. I flash upon Molly digging up my tulips and little green people coming to take my house and family away, hee-hee, hoo-hoo, ha-ha. Oh let’s stop this before I’m climbing the walls.

Gosh, I wish I could go to sleep.