One of the most frustrating things about this cancer battle is not so much the multiple miseries of chemo side effects (such as twitching muscles and nerves that are bothering me even as I write) but the not knowing. We didn't know if my body would be able to take chemo, and so we had a second treatment option that we are working toward, which includes a blood test that requires being off all cytotoxic agents and supplements for two weeks. We had to plan this blood test in between chemos. And no antibiotics for 10 days. That would be okay if you didn't need any of that stuff, but what if you need them? What if you need your thyroid supplement to get through the day and some supplements for this and that?
What if you have staph infection? Chemo rash? I'm trying to get through just three more days to the blood test until I can start taking supplements again, and antibiotic if I need it. Until then, I was told to use oregano oil for the small boils (diluted of course, because that particular essential oil burns like crazy. (I don't usually cry with pain, but I was in my room crying with that the other day. Thankfully the burning pain goes away in about 15 or 20 minutes and the boils had practically melted away overnight, too, at least some of them. Then another one erupted. It is right on the bone in the center of my sternum. Too painful to try to apply oregano oil or warm compresses or to try to drain. It looks like a miniature volcano.
Even the doctors don't seem to know what to do. Do we go with a less aggressive antibiotic and just take it consistently as a preventative, or do we hit the infection with something more aggressive but with worse side effects, including being hard on the digestive system, as if chemo hasn't already wrecked my whole body?
A little of my hair has hung on like the last leaves of autumn, but I know I look terrible.
On
top of that, my stomach is bothering me a lot lately, nerves in my
sides are twitching , and Hardly anything I eat agrees with me. I was
letting myself eat some bread or pasta products, and I just don't feel
good afterward. I pigged out on bits of the toastiest part of the garlic toast one evening, and paid for it later. When I couldn't resist a little raw honey, I don't feel
good afterward, either. So treats are pretty much out. To say nothing of food not tasting good, most of it.
And then on an extra hard day like today, after eating just a little supper, I had to go lie down hoping to get rid of the pain that was almost unbearable.
And then there was a misunderstanding that was a sudden jab, like the needle-sharp jab of this prickly pear cactus that went right through the sole of my worn out shoe once when Jonathan and I were walking through the field to the mailbox. (That was just before my last chemo, when for a day or two I had the energy to walk to the mailbox again. Hopping on one foot, I gave Jonathan my shoe and he pulled the cactus barb out with his trusty leatherman tool that he is never without.)
This evening I was back in the kitchen while the family was finishing hearty triangles of Jonathan's favorite peanut butter "pizza" and warm bacon-wrapped cheese-stuffed jalapenos. And someone waved the jalapeno that they were eating up toward me and asked me if I didn't want it. I didn't, and they knew I didn't like jalapenos, but all I could think was that I would have loved to eat a treat, too. To have someone else's treat waved in my face was too much. After nearly 2 years of watching everyone else enjoy the normal food and very often desserts that I also would like to eat, and not allowed to eat because of cancer, it was just too much.
It just hurt. And when I said something about how I felt having treats that I cannot eat waved in my face, and how I want to scream and throw things, family members all react in different ways. One looks like I needed to grow up, another one anxiously tries to explain what had really been meant, and the person who had done it quickly and meekly apologizes--more than once. Everyone was horrified and felt bad, and I ended up falling apart and going into the living room in not just pain, but feeling like passing out. It was such a little thing, so stupid. It wasn't meant badly, but it had hit me badly. And I wanted to scream and throw things.
I didn't, of course. But I did cry. Later. In the office. After I had wandered back into the kitchen later and looked at all the good food on the counter that I could not eat and then in the cupboards, wondering what food I could eat that wouldn't make me feel bad. I don't usually cry, but tonight, I did. I finally went and got a bowl of yogurt that I had fixed for myself. Homemade goat milk yogurt with a tiny drizzle of agave nectar and some stevia in it. I sat at my desk in the office, writing a check to pay the water bill and gagging down yogurt, and crying.
I let myself cry. I told myself it was okay, that maybe I needed to just cry. That it was okay. I repeat, it was okay. I had tried for well over two years to be brave, and had rarely cried. Tonight I cried.
Out in the living room, I pick up a Voice of the Martyrs magazine, focusing on Vietnam. I hadn't felt like reading it earlier because I felt like I couldn't handle more burden on my heart right now, but with such a hurting heart and pained innards this evening, I knew that it would be good for me to read about believers in very difficult circumstances. It would help me gain perspective. So I read about a new believer in Vietnam who had lost her husband when he was beaten to death for being a Christian, and how she was evicted from her home and finally was allowed to stay in a sympathetic friend's pigpen with her young daughter. She would go out in the jungle and gather roots and fruit to feed herself and her daughter, and instead of selling extra ones she collected, she gave them instead to a poor elderly woman for whom no one in the village cared. Her light was shining for Jesus. I read article after article about the Vietnamese Christians, how some were having to flee to Laos, and how others were being faithful to Christ despite the persecution, remaining there where the risk was great.
It made my problems look petty. We had a happy family meal tonight, even if I did have to leave in the middle and go stretch out in the recliner. From there, I had read no less than three chapters out loud from a book that just arrived in the mail in exchange for a couple of mine. This one was from Dorcas Smucker, a fellow conservative Christian blogger. Her insights and humor about middle age motherhood are interesting to all ages, and there were gales of laughter at different spots in the chapters.
I was glad I hadn't screamed and thrown things. I just had spoken up about how I felt. And I had read about people who have it worse. And then I cried. And that was okay.
And it's all better now.
