When my various treatments begin, I will have to give up a
lot of things. I’ll have to give up hot/spicy food when I’m on chemo, because
it will upset my stomach. Also caffeinated coffee. Also fatty foods. Most of
all I will have to give up alcohol, because it would both irritate my throat
(which will be irradiated five days a week) and interfere with some of the
medications. One of the Comprehensive Cancer Center people told me the other
day: “We’ve tried accommodating people with alcohol, and it just doesn’t work.”
Good goddamn!
My friend Joanne said, in response to this: “Pretend it’s
Lent.”
This is excellent advice. Lent is forty days (not counting
Sundays), roughly the period of my chemo/radiation therapy. People generally
give up silly things for Lent, like chocolate and popcorn. I will be giving up
my beloved curries, and hot sauce (which I put on pretty much everything!), and
my evening drinks (which calm me tremendously).
But the treatments haven’t begun yet. I probably won’t start
them until mid-October, once my feeding tube has been installed and my dental
work is done and my facial swelling has subsided. (When you undergo radiation
for throat cancer, they make a mask to hold your head in exactly the right
position. If they make the mask before my dental work, or while I’m swollen,
the radiation won’t be directed accurately.)
So I now have approximately three weeks of no rules at all,
before the treatments begin. Three weeks of Mardi Gras.
And what happens during Mardi Gras?
All hell breaks loose.
I have had curry three days in a row now. I drink nightly. I’m
eating ice cream as I write this.
When I begin the treatments, I hope they prescribe me a lot
of soothing medication, for Partner’s sake and my own.
Remember what Bette Midler said to
Kramer on “Seinfeld,” when she wanted her black-and-white cookie:
BETTE: Get me one of those Black and White cookies.
KRAMER: Yeah, all right, yeah…. (hangs up) They don't have any. But don't worry I'm going to get you one somewhere.
BETTE: Good. Because if I don't get a Black and White cookie I'm not going to be very pleasant to be around.
KRAMER: Now that's impossible.
O I assure you
it’s possible.
Happy Mardi
Gras!
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