R words

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Wednesday, December 11, 2013 was the day of my last radiation treatment. I had my final chemotherapy treatment the week before, on Tuesday, December 3.

I am done with treatment. I am now in Recovery.

Recovery would be lovely if it took place in a day, or maybe two. It does not. As one waggish commentator said online: “The radiation doesn’t stop cooking you all at once. It keeps simmering for a while.”

Lovely.

Also, there are the naggingly minor side effects, like the sore throat that makes it almost impossible to swallow, and the bizarrely twisted sense of taste. (I long for real tastes, and for solid food. I was reading the biography of Muriel Spark the other day and found a mention of Muriel having drinks with Edith Sitwell – “iced gin with grapefruit juice” – that almost made me burst into tears.)

My energy is returning, which is not necessarily a good thing. I have lots of get-up-and-go, but very little to do. Christmas is useful, because I can use my time making lists, checking them twice, etc. I can organize books on my bookshelves. I can write little feuilletons like this one, when I can summon up enough brain cells to do so.

And I can day by day think about my improvement. I needed less pain medication today. My throat was less obstructed today. I slept a straight four hours last night!

So much for recovery.

There’s another R word that I don’t even want to think about right now, for fear of jinxing myself: Remission.

Remission is the absence of cancer. My radiation oncologist (who is not normally the soul of Christmas good cheer) tells me, with his gargoyle’s grin, that he cannot see any sign of the original tumor in my throat when he looks down inside. (That is, of course, with the naked eye. He is not Superman and does not have X-ray vision.) This is excellent news, and I will be having several more tests over the next few weeks and months to confirm this. Back in September, when this whole cavalcade began, I had a Stage IV tumor (“roughly the size of a Meyer lemon,” according to another clever little Internet source) under or beside my left tonsil, along with an assortment of nastily swollen lymph nodes. Now – who knows? The whole kit and caboodle appear to be gone.

I say again: they appear to be gone.

We Reassure ourselves with the good cheer of our doctors that the treatments Really Really worked. We don’t ever want to go through that kind of treatment again. (The first month or so was nothing at all. The last few weeks were Repulsive.)

So here’s to the future, and to another day of Recovery.

And you know what? The new season of Ru Paul’s Drag Race begins in a month or so.

So I have something to look forward to after all.

(Also: doesn’t the rhino in the illustration above look like a hippo to you?)

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The magic road to recovery; or, Look like a zombie in only three days!

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 Recovery from an illness is very nice, of course.  But there are very many things you have to take into account.

 

 

Your looks, for example.

 

 

I am not a beefy specimen to begin with.  So three days of fever and almost no food made me lose another three pounds.  I looked in the mirror yesterday morning before work and saw a cast member of “The Walking Dead.”  (The strange flyaway hair didn’t help, nor did the interesting green/gray/pale skin tone.)  It is almost a miracle that people didn’t rear back from me and shriek when they saw me.  Actually, one did, my Truthsayer Gaius Helen Mohiam AKA Apollonia, who lifted her eyes to me, bellowed, and said, “You look horrible!  But not in a bad way.”  (I tried lunging at myself and snapping when I saw myself in the bathroom mirror, and it was pretty effective.  If I can hold onto this look for another two weeks, I can save money on Halloween makeup.)

 

 

My posture, never good, has now become a staggering lurching horror, like the shadow chasing you down the hallway in a Hitchcock movie.  Again, I like this.  Anything to bring fear to the hearts of those around me. 

 

 

But you know what?  It’s all right.  One of the founders of modern common sense, Judith Martin (better known as Miss Manners), once wrote (I can only paraphrase, I don’t have the books here) that, if you must work sick (or as I was today, not sick exactly, but just not feeling terrific), you should look sick.  This will arouse Fear and Pity in those around you, and they will keep a dignified distance from you.  This will be good for them, in case you are still contagious; it is certainly good for you, because any bozo repellent is good bozo repellent. 

 

 

Sadly, I am continuing to recover.  Thank God I have some raw avocado in the fridge.  That should keep the green color going for a couple of days . . . .

 

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Contagion: the update

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 Only a few days ago I posted an entry about flying to Florida and back, and all the dangers of contracting an illness.  But I hadn’t gotten sick yet, so ha ha!

 

 

Well ha ha ha.

 

 

Let this be a lesson, kids: if you’re okay, keep your mouth shut about it.  Otherwise something will happen.

 

 

I felt more or less okay until about Thursday of last week.  I joshed around with Apollonia and the merry crew at lunchtime that day, and then I went back to my office and –

 

 

And I really didn’t want to be there anymore.  I felt bone-tired and listless and strangely aucch.

 

 

So I let my boss know, and I went home around 3pm, and I lay down and slept.

 

 

I maintained a pretty constant vegetative state for about forty-eight hours, mostly lying on my left side, my hands cupped under my head.  I got up once in a while to get some water or try to eat something (usually a mistake), but inevitably groped my way back to my little futon.

 

 

I was running a pretty high fever (which finally broke sometime on Saturday night, praise the Lord Buddha).  I alternated sweats and chills.  The sweats were just sort of non-aesthetic; the chills were actually scary.  I felt like I was having spasms. 

 

 

My dreams were stupendous.  They went so fast that they were exhausting.  Sometime I was having three at once!  One of them was entirely in the form of printed pages of dialogue flying all around.  They were literally exploding out of me: I’d just close my eyes, and it was like standing over the crater of a volcano, watching the lava rushing straight up for you.

 

 

On Sunday, I finally felt better, a little.  I had some meager Annie’s Shells and White Cheddar, which is not really my favorite food, but it sufficed.  And some of Partner’s much more interesting pasta dish with meatballs and Italian sausage, which I somehow managed to tuck away when he wasn’t looking.

 

 

Listen: I lost at least two pounds in the last three days.  I need sustenance.

 

 

Anyway: I’m still alive.  Just so you know.

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