Well, it’s begun, finally, this journey – chemo has started at last.
So far, no side effects to report, apart from the 100mg of Prednisone I started yesterday, and which I get daily for a month.
Wooof. Activated? Waddya mean activated? I am going to be The Binky of Prednisone: “the horrer that walks in the nite… the babys cry wen i lok at them and ther mothers are helples to comfert them”. Last night, I was revved up, my thoughts going a mile a minute, and my brain all but twitching., And irritable? Every tpyo threatened to have the laptop flung through the window. Today I found myself shouting at my oldest friend. Even I’m scared of me.
Chemo itself, apart from the process of coming to grips with what it stood for, was relatively painless. Unfortunately, the brilliant job that the neurosurgeon did with my hairdo rather interfered with finding the Ommaya Port, and it took two oncologists and two neurosurgeons (!) close to half an hour of poking my scalp with sharp needles to finally locate the thing. When it was over, the junior neurosurgeon – great ox of a man – asked to identify where it was, since he’d been unable to find it until his boss came down and bailed him out., I felt his great size 9 thumb come down on the dome, and heard
One of the agents they use in the systemic chemo – Daunorubin – turns your pee fluorescent orange and makes your tears rusty red. Between this and the rash, I sense that the fates are insisting on a whole new colour scheme in my, ah, lifestyle. (I’m fascinated by that word, which I see as a sure and accurate marker for weaselese, be it magazinase or the worst sort of political demagoguery. Speaking of which, a friend gave me a magazine for my hospital amusement, and it had an interview with an interior decorator who was quoted as saying (and this was highlighted in colour [pale pink] in a paragraph insert, so it was obviously Important To Understand): “I advocate having a personal touch in every room”. Well, no shit. Really? In every room? The very thought! Give that man a medal for his daring approach to life, his innovative thinking, his sheer capacity to Go Where No Android Has Gone Before.)
Did I mention that Prednisone leads to ADD? Bizarre trains of thought? Discusiveness? Too many question marks per paragraph? No?
Anyhow, here we are, on the journey, twitching with steroidal energy (“I am Ahnuld! Hear me roar!”) and ready to goooooo.
Posted by maddy at October 13, 2003 08:23 PM