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Humiliation #356.8: the loss of eyebrows.

Now when my hair started falling out, I was not all that upset. I mean, I don't really like my hair, and I am no stranger to extreme styles, having sported both a mohawk and dreadlocks at different times during my youthful and not so youthful past. However, I was not prepared, in any way, shape or form, to lose my precious EYEBROWS.

I like eyebrows. Without them, my head looks like an elongated honeydew, or perhaps something even blander. I look like a real alien, not the pretty kind that you see on star trek, but one of those hairless, scary things that communicate by blasting you with some kind of disintigrating ray.

So, it is with great regret that I report that sure enough, my freakin eyebrows are making like chernobl and falling out (heh). I've literally got about 8 hairs left on each brow, and I mascara those like mad. I've taken to having to draw in little feathery hairs, which sometimes makes me look like gloria swanson in sunset boulevard.

now all I need's a turban. OOPS, i'm wearing one.

AAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGAHHHHHH!!!!!!!

I FEAR CHANGE

Today i had to go in for blood counts, and my onc told me she wanted to start me on herceptin next week along with taxol.

I FEAR CHANGE.

As long as the plan is laid out in front of me (i am a devotee to THE ROUTINE, remember?) I can cruise, I can ignore, I can live in da nile like a happy crocodile.

BUT, when you change the plan, that means you make me actually have to think about what I'm really doing here. I mean, that i had cancer. And of course, that means I'll ALWAYS be a cancer patient, remember.

"Now you know what it's like to live in fear"

Fear of everything. A mosquito bite. A sore toe. A slightly depressed appetite. The way my watch hits the vein in my wrist. Add those to my usual panoply of horrors, the oiltank truck blowing up when I'm next to it, electrical fires, the crazed soccer mom SUV driver when I'm walkin home at night. Yes, even my rational (heh) fears pale by comparison to the fear that something in my body will betray me...

imagine swallowing a bomb. Imagine being a suicide bomber who changed her mind. Imagine being a replicant who doesn't know her expiration date, but knows she's been around a while...

who needs fear factor? Welcome to my life...

taxing taxol

so here it is, your on-site reporting on chemotherapy side effects, from the most minute to the grossest stomach churners, from the hangnail to the ear growing out of the elbow, to the alien in the belly (yeah, just kidding. i read too much sci fi).

at any rate, the steroids having worn off (bye bye enhancements...), i now view the real face of taxol and feel its real icy touch. And folks, it ain't bad. Hate to tell u, those of you who like to thrill to cancer grrl's dark victories, compared w/AC, taxol is almost like being a real person....

....it's almost like being a real person who is 85 years old and has about a million arthritic joints...

Yeah, taxol causes joint, muscle and bone pain. And I feel it lordy yes I do. This morning in particular I had to wake up several times and wonder if I had somehow been transported back to the end days of my dance career, when it seemed I was only hired for my facility and brain-dead willingness to toss my body around in ridiculous and injurious ways. I wondered where the ice packs and ibu were, and what time i had to get to rehearsal.

Then it hit me. The good news is, you're not a dancer anymore. The bad news is, you had cancer and are now getting CHEMO!!! Oh yeah, right. forgot.

A couple of hours of yoga later, i feel almost good, though still experiencing the patented chemo exhaustion.

But, I was right. pain beats nausea any day. At least I can eat. And, anyway, pain is familiar. Pain is weakness leaving the body.....(bwahahahaah now who in da world said that?)

food glorious food!

Read my lips: NO NAUSEA!

This morning I chowed most heartily on scrambled eggiwegs mixed with melted cheddar, apples with cinnamon, and rye crackers with olive oil. And damned if I don't want some more, please, sir.

I am so damned elated with this development that I can scarce contain myself. Perhaps food is the key to mojo?

In nurritam, mojoam est...


*ok i know that's not real latin. Call it abbilatin if you like. I do not care.

i want a new drug

Today was taxol day number one. Taxol's side fx are supposed to be less than those of AC, at least in terms of nausea. Taxol is supposed to cause you to be achy, and have numb fingers and toes if you take enuff of it (but i've only got 4 sessions, so shouldn't happen) I do not want numb fingers and toes. That would interfere badly with my running and my violin playing...(insert old joke here...doctor, will I be able to play the violin after this?....) NO i don't play violin, thanks for asking. Just wanted to see if u were paying attention, all 4 of you. And you know who you are.

Also, with taxol, one is pumped chock full of steroids. It seems a shame to waste these precious drugs and I feel as if I should go hang out in the weight room of the gym, oiling myself. Pass the creatine, Anders. At any rate, I ran 3.18 miles this a.m. In fact, this week for the first time since surgery, I've done 3 cardio days in a row, tuesday I ran 3miles, weds I did stationary bike and rowing, and today I ran. Almost human.

As my 4.5 readers may be aware, I have not been blogging much recently. After viewing "the spy who shagged me" today at my chemo session (yeah they show movies....NOT! I brought in my laptop and borrowed one), I can tell you exactly what my problem is.

I've lost my mojo. My mojo ain't workin. And when my mojo goes, the word ceases to befriend me. The word won't descend from on high (or down low, in the case of most mojo), the pun won't engage, the witticism won't crackle, the madness won't ignite, the ridiculous won't be obvious and the sublime won't come near. I am de-Henry Millerized. My aspergian nature reverts to its pre-verbal state. I start to peer at things and rock a bit. I do not want to write.

and, having written, don't want to put it up for all to read. I am mojoless.

has anyone out there seen my mojo?

revelicious

Yesterday, I had acupuncture for the first time.

Last night I dreamed that my hair grew 6 inches in one night, and that it was beautiful and I liked it, and tossed it around like I wuz some hottie movie stah, all the while pouting and preening. My doctors all wanted to perform hot and cold running tests on me, due to my anomalous hirsutistic aspect, but the tests they wanted to perform turned out to be having me eat different cheese plates from progressively more nouvelle and cutting edge restaurants, driving me around in a shameless and spotless SUV, and introducing me to a calico, yoga-master rabbit who waived his gorgeous little arms at a giant, red, climbing rosebush whilst eyeing the SUV in enlightened disdain.

All this took place in the lush, wet, superfertile, hyperreal Engligh countryside of 1970s Masterpiece theater, or perhaps Wallace & Grommit. The hospital was a bed and breakfast, charmingly rustic. When I visited the bathroom, I preened and pouted in a cracked, filigreed 18th century mirror. "I think I'll keep my hair like this" I told myself, and smiled.

I awoke bald, grey faced, and tired.

Reality bites.

friday cat blog

hey, just because this is a cancer blog, don't mean y'all don't get a friday cat blog!


here, Pink and Abby spoon most photogenically. This is kind of a rare pic for them, they are usually making goofy faces or engaging in some furry tussling.

Incidentally, cats are comforting on the bad days (except for their tendency to trudge across the queasy stomach area undaunted by protests, or, worse, to use it as a launching pad in case of a sudden urge to attack each other). They are also great fun on good days, and perform unnecessary back flips when tempted by a feather stick, until all parties are panting in frenzy.



At any rate, it's friday, and cats must be pixelated and presented to the world for worship. Basht would wish it so.

P.S. Yes, pink is a one-eyed cat. He lost his eye most traumatically, when he was a mere tiny blob of furry protoplasm. Yet he thrived and cares not a fig for his missing eye. He feels he is splendid without it. Basht would agree. Read about pink's eye here. Be sure to read the comments, as they tell the terrible tale...

Lay on, Macduff

And damned be him who first cries "Hold, enough!"


Well, I just had chemo #4, which is my last AC treatment. I'm told that Taxol is "easier" in terms of side effex. Instead of nausea, you get pain. I AM DOWN FOR THAT. woo hoo. pain! I can hardly wait.

(madonna, at right, demonstrates why crucifixion, although painful, is perennially fashionable)




So I have one more week of quease. I'm halfway through chemo. I should have a belt with notches in it. Then I can kick back in bars and describe each notch in such harrowing ways as to make bouncers barf. I would love to make bouncers barf. Speaking of which, I usually see only old people at my sessions, but last time, I saw a guy who couldn't have been more than 25. He looked like he was in awesome shape, sort of a middleweight boxer's build. Bald of course, but hard to tell if the baldness was bouncer/tough guy-chic or chemo. Anyway, I felt bad. Getting cancer is bad enough when you're old, but when you're young, it really sux.

At any rate (or no rate at all) I ran 3 miles this morning. If i let myself think back to when 3 miles was not a big deal, I get kinda depressed, because 3 miles now is really hard. I'm huffing by the end of it.

*by the way, apologies to all and sundry for the above mixed metaphor stew. chemo takes its toll on the cognitive abilities. I believe I may, in fact, be drooling.

oh, piss

just when i start to feel goood....
SLAM!

tomorrow is chemo #4. I shudder and gag in anticipation...