chemo report and musings

Here I am getting my third Paclitaxel treatment. All went well in spite of my certainty that the chemicals were not going into the vein but free-floating around under my skin. It took two nurses to convince me otherwise. Don't ask me where that notion was born...I have no idea.

Tom and Betty gave me the little bear for my 60th birthday. He rides to chemo in my bag every week. I like to take little totems that represent people I love with me to chemo. I always take a jar of Vicks for my mom. I've taken poems, pictures, books, cards, and coffee cups...you just never know.

I usually take a couple things to do, my knitting, a book to read, cards to write but I find with the big hit of Benedryl they give me that I just like to sit and relax. I wish I could sleep. Yesterday, I came back from dragging my IV pole to the bathroom with me and as I looked around the room, everyone was curled up under a while blanket, asleep. It looked like a scene from the movie Coma and my first reaction was to scream and run for the door. What am I doing hanging around with these old, sick people? I demonstrated remarkable restraint and returned quietly to my recliner.

People rarely strike up conversations in the treatment room. They rarely make eye contact. I don't know why that is. Maybe it's Midwestern Scandinavian/Germans. (An extroverted one of those will look at your shoes when talking to you. Instead of their own. Ha.) Blog readers who are cancer friends...is it different in other places?

The nurses, however, are friendly and chipper in a good way. They always visit and they happily put up with my shenanigans as in paragraph #1. (They probably laugh about me when they go out for drinks at the end of their shift but that's a good thing. The only thing I like better than a good story is being the subject of one.) They're angels who walk among us.

One of my readers, Karen, left the nicest comment about my blog yesterday. (I read the email of it on my phone in the middle of the night which is another story...the multiple ways that information gets into our heads nowadays.) I'll encourage you to read it because she is a very good writer and I appreciate so much the time she took to say all those nice things about me. Shucks, Karen. But I'm so glad we're cyber friends.

A Facebook quote by Winston Borden: After fighting cancer for months, I have ever so slowly concluded that having cancer can be a liberating experience. It has caused me to live more in and appreciate the moment--sometimes with lowered expectations. I agree.

I read something (an app?) on my Kindle called Pulse. I can read blogs, newspapers, and lots of stuff there. I won't try to explain it because I have no idea really what it is. It's like why airplanes can fly and little birds don't freeze their legs off in the winter. Inexplicable.

So, what I read was this: a meteor fell to earth in Russia and 400 people were injured. I don't know if this is a rare occurrence or not but what struck me about it is that my seven-year old granddaughter told me this was going to happen when she was here last weekend. Is this something she learned about in school? I wish I had asked her more about it then. Was she worried? She seemed sure it wasn't going to fall in St. Peter. 

It reminded me of the stories my elementary school music teacher told during the Cold War. He came in every day ranting about how Russia was going to blow us off the map. Then he would loudly unfurl the rolled up world map and point to Russia and then the US and he would repeat, "Russia is going to blow us off the map!" This was in the days of duck and cover so I had terrible night mares about being blown off the map. I think my mom finally had to call him and request that he cease and desist. He should have been teaching us Old Dan Tucker instead of talking about world politics, the crazy old coot.

I have my own blog as one of the things I can read on this app. It always tickles me to see a picture with my post title. I'm always a little surprised. Always. Oh, look! That's mine! Haha! After Karen wrote those nice things about my blog, I had to go back and read a couple of the past week's posts. Another reason I love to blog...it's a good record of what I've done and where I've been.


Here's my daily can of whoop ass. Our friends, Betty and Tom, vacationing in Texas. You can tell this is not Minnesota by their attire, by the palm trees, by the sandy beach, and by the lack of frost bite on their appendages.

Tom takes the pugs, Gonzo and Elvis, for a ride.