In Which I Whine, and Try to get Kleenex to Sponsor my Dinner Napkins.

I have an appointment for a new pain therapy this Friday. "What?" Sez you. " I didn't know you were in pain!" and I know you said it, because every one says it.
  
Well, yeah, they cut off  some of my tongue, and then, mad scientist style, they followed that up with 30 days of radiation aimed directly the surgery site, burning it to a fine crisp. That shit hurts, and it's gonna hurt for a long time.
   
Like all survivers, I've learned a sort of etiquette that goes along with cancer treatmentst. You just kind of figure out what people can tolerate and what they can't, and you learn what you yourself can take and what you can't.
 
 Realistically, how long can you stand around in your good outfit saying "Gosh, that's interesting, " and then following it up with "Ow, ouch, whoo, man, OW, oh boy! Damn, that hurts!" Right? Who needs it at a party? Who needs it anywhere?
   Well, you get it. There's just not really a way to work chronic anything into a conversation. and cancer is so gross, God, if I spent one minute talking about what's really happening? Echhhh. I can't even say the word mucus out loud, and apparently I am entirely constructed of....that. Ew.
     
I've developed plenty of eccentricities, the ones that it appears people can live with. At least, I hope it's not just good manners but, no, I think they've really forgotten how bizarre I've become. For example, I have this weird brown bottle with a long snoot on it.Well, snoot is not the right word,it's a needle nose cap designed to get to hard  to reach places, like the way back of my mouth. Several times during a conversation or at out at a meal I will take this bottle and aim that snoot waaay back there and give it a good squirt. I don't even know I'm doing it anymore. Can you imagine someone taking out a can of deodorant and spraying themselves three or four times while you're trying to talk to them about something? It is so strange.Believe me, I only try to get away with this in front of people who love me.
   
What's in the bottle? It's lidocaine, similar to the stuff the dentist gives you before the needle. It certainly takes the pain away, replacing it with an odd stinging numbness, and rendering my tongue useless.  But I do it and don't even realize it! And that's not the only odd thing that I do that people seem to take for granted after a while. I'm thinking about the trail of napkins that follows me wherever I go. And just in case I can get them to sponsor a lifetime supply, let me tell you that it has to be Kleenex dinner napkins, and nothing else. I won't tell you what I do with them, who cares? It's revolting, but it seems to be one of those things people let me do.  I personally would not enjoy talking with someone who dabbed constantly at either corner of their mouth with the Kleenex Dinner Napkin, until coughing up a some kind of hairball and then returning to the conversation without blinking an eye..I make veils out of them to avoid spitting on my audience, and often use them just to blow my nose But there is never a trash can anywhere near by and I've gotten used to that, too.. I just got out of a meeting with the mayor with two of those things stuck in my bra, one in the waistband of my pants and one in my hand, and even he took it in stride.. They might be secretly thinking " Oh my God, that s so revolting," Well suck it, if you are. You should see what goes on at home.

The other thing is, I'm not kidding, when I have to sit down, or go home, I mean at that moment. Not  in a minute, or when you finish your sentence.

     I am embarrassed to report that I  had a client, once, who said that she had to sit, and plopped down on a stone step right where we were standing. I didn't want her to have to look up my dress, so I plopped myself down next to her, leaving the issue of how I was going to get up again for later. She told me that she had MS. I had two thoughts. First of all I didn't all the way know what MS was, but it sounded like the the telethon thing, and I could see she didn't have that. Second, I thought, " Oh, come on, Miss Munchhausen, you could have made it up the fricken' steps and into the car, and then you would be sitting! Now look where we are!"

   Well, paybacks are hell, they say, and now I know.When I have to sit, it's because I've reached sit or fall, a state that comes over me not like a wave, but like a kidnappers hood being dropped over my head.  When I say I'm tired, I'm using the only word in my vocabulary to describe something so far beyond tired, I don't know what else to call it. And all of that comes a lot from having pain all the time.

So there's a new therapy, and they're going to try it on me. They do try new stuff on us, in measured doses. That's how things that weren't available five years ago are available now. I'm going in tomorrow for a new pain treatment that requires a two hour IV (Just like chemo! Yay!) and if it's successful over time, I'll have nothing to whine about. I've had so many treatments I dont' have much of a reaction to whatever any doctor suggests, but I am kind of guardedly excited about it.

But yo, Kleenex, I'm still going to need those Kleenex Dinner Napkins.

It just never fails. The minute the plumbers show up, I am overcome by roaring attacks of flatulence that will not be denied.It is completely involuntary, and clench what muscle I may, any movement at all will release a noise so loud there's not even any point in pretending it didn't happen. The poor plumbers' assistants look as though a chandelier has fallen from the ceiling, and I feel as though my cover as La Patrona is kind of tarnished. I'm Melanie Wilkes, blowing her own hoop skirt up at a tea for Scarlett.
    I must carry on, with my chin held high. I have spent nearly twenty years with Bruno trying to create the illusion that this never happens at all, and now I am reduced to blowing air pockets into my pajama pants in front of the work crew. And woe betide us all when I think I'm alone in the room! I will make a sound like the Queen Mary saluting the Statue of Liberty with a couple of deafening blasts and when I turn around, there again is the plumbers' assistant, looking thunderstruck.

So. Let's move on, shall we? This is not the only indelicacy that somehow has become my new normal. Cancer and it's treatment is gross, and that's that.

   I was so sad when I wrote my last post. Many of you could tell and wrote to me, and I thank you.That feeling of going down for the third time has passed. It always does, and I know that.
   So what happened? I dunno. You tell me. The Big Giant Something got a hold of me before I went down for the fourth time, and I realized that night in bed that I was back.

Of course. It always passes. Always.

 I knew it would pass because I'm fifty seven, and I've been through some shit. I knew it would pass because my sister and my step daughter, who are my Spirit Guides, kept telling me so, although there were many times when it was only because my sister and my step daughter,(the unlikeliest Spirit Guide in the world, by the way, with her Fendi and glossy hair),  kept telling me so. That's the bottom of the cycle, when all you've got is knowing that it will get better, and hopefully someone to tell you so, but you can't remember that it's ever been any different, and you can't believe that it's ever going to change. Horrible. Hurts.

And passes.

And then there's this plumbing thing that's happening. Really? Plumbing problems, now?
Yes.
This is what happened practically the minute that I published that post, from the depths of that well where I knew only God was going to be able to save me. The plumbers came. It doesn't matter why, but I'm ridiculously panicky about things having to do with home repair.They did their job, and then came to me and reported that they suspected a leak, either under the floor or in the walls. Excavation would be required. This would be a CSI operation, since they had no idea where to look. This was not exactly what I was expecting from God. Hmm. Mysterious ways and whatnot.

In the state I was in, I felt...nothing. No, what happened was, a clear image of a tree branch presented itself in my mind, and then snapped itself in two. I could not absorb the tearing up of tile floors until a leak was found. And what then? Putting the tile back? Putting back the concrete walls? No. Broken branch. I had been crying buckets all week, sobbing when the breeze blew, and that just dried it up. For a little while. It made me feel so scared, which my therapist, Valerie Rhoda, explained was me feeling like the cancer had spread to the house. Yes, possibly. I was thinking it might be about costing money we couldn't possibly have to undertake an operation like that, but mostly it, it just sounded ...impossible.

   But you know what? When Bruno got home, he didn't throw his hands in the air and say " Oh, Lawd!" When a new cast of plumbers came to look, none of them looked at each other and cried "Oh, no,what shall we do!?" In fact, nobody that knew anything, which does NOT include me, freaked out at all. Below you will see pictures of all my worst nightmares coming true. Thank you, God. Hilarious.

Is it here? No!

How about here? No!

CSI Detective Brad Grieve using sonar so the house didn't have

to be completely torn up.It ended up being maybe 5 locations they
had to excavate before they found the leak.
Pretty cool.

Somehow, it was during this chaos that I got tossed back up on the beach from the ocean of black depression that I thought might just drown me. Hate my life? That's crazy talk! I love my life, and want it and wish some things were different. I'll try my best to make them different, to get to the finish line even if I am stumbling. I am already being held up by my friends--you know how they do as you get closer and start really falling down-- my friends and my husband and my spirit guides hold me up and make sure I don't fall apart or fall down with the finish line in sight.
I went from feeling despair to living my life, feeling normal, having my house torn up, getting chemo on Monday. What happened? Like I said, you tell me.

Mind you, the dial has only swung to the middle, not all the way to the other side.
I mean,I'm going to chemotherapy on Monday, and I haven't done laundry in eight days because my house is torn up from end to end .I think my posse would be a little alarmed if I was feeling joyful about it.
No, I am right in the middle. I will spend a lot of days just boringly being me.
This entails;
   Wishing I was better at meditating. wishing I was motivated  to attend free online College courses instead of watching Judge Judy. Wishing I would study Spanish. Thinking I need to start exercising.
   I will wish I had that elusive gene, the Pinterest gene, that makes it impossible for some people to sit in their house if it's not spic 'n span, I will spend hours on Pinterest. I will be grateful and delighted that I'm out of the abyss, There's going to be a lot of gratitude involved.I will dream about the day that I  feel that charge of electricity that comes with joy. At Christmas, maybe, or on a beach vacation with my family. Oh, I know it's there.
Someday.
It's not far now.