Lordy Lord

Well, GiG knew alright. I am writing from yet another hospital room. I set my alarm for 6am this morning so I would have plenty of time to prep for a full day back at chemo, and when I went downstairs my mom was sitting straight up on the couch, having been awake for hours with severe pain (and later vomiting). Fifteen minutes later my dad, mom and I were sitting around the kitchen table discussing how she could possibly endure chemo and the hell that would come just from that on top of the pain she was already enduring (and enduring on top of two separate pain meds at that). The last two times my mom wavered about doing chemo, the last two times she had a sense that something was going wrong, indeed something was (first the pulmonary embolism and then the pneumonitis), so my only advice to her to trust was to trust her instincts. (“This is your body, not some work project that needs completing,” I said). When she called the oncology office to say that she wouldn’t be coming, they told her to go to the hospital (which is connected to the cancer center) to be admitted so they could work full-time to alleviate and track down the pain. She’s down getting a CAT scan now with the hope of figuring out what’s going on (and the even bigger hope that it is nothing terribly serious).

So, that’s where we are now; a real-life House episode.

When my mom got the positive PET scan results the other day, most of her loved ones were overjoyed. The fact that this news was delivered while she was in the ER, tempered my reaction as well as my father’s. Regardless of what a test says, if you feel bad, you feel bad so (as my gut told me from the start) until this pain passes, I can’t join in the celebration.

Shortly after we got my mom into her hospital room, IV in place, she recounted a story of how years ago when she injured her knee and was given Dilaudid---the med she is on now---for pain before having it popped it back into place, she had joked, “I want this if I ever get cancer.”

Funny stuff.

There are laughs to be had though.

The hospital she’s in is a Catholic one so a Chaplain just came in (or a Sister...I’m not sure how this ranking system goes; I think she might be the equivalent of a lieutenant to Jesus) to offer my mom prayer and ask her if she wanted a priest to come tomorrow for “the anointing of the sick” (to which---to her cynical daughter’s shock and awe---she said yes. You can take the girl out of Bethlehem...) When the Chaplain left, but with the quiet solemnity of her presence still in the room, my dad said, “And I’m going to sacrifice a goat for you.”

Maybe you had to be there, but there’s nothing like a little sacrilege to lighten the mood. I was grateful he said something because for a second I thought I was in a different family than the religiously ambiguous, if not dubious, one than I was born into. Then again, maybe I shouldn’t go looking a gift-nun in the mouth. Plus, raised Catholic as she was, I think my mom still feels the connection to these roots. Prayer is prayer. I kid, but it’s a nice thing they do here.

So, that’s the story. I know some of you check in here just for her status (and, shockingly, not to hear about my hair) so I’ll give you the facts when I can, provided we get ‘em.

For now, Peace Be With You.

Goodnight Moon

My mom called me into the family room tonight to look at the big fat orange moon over the river. She noticed moons long before she had cancer. She always notices.

Chemo first thing tomorrow. Hopefully she always knows, too.

Goodnight stars,

Goodnight air,

Goodnight noises everywhere.

It's 8:37 and I'm calling it a night!

This doesn't even look good but I'm stumped for a header pic so there it is...I'm tired!

So, how's this, when I can, I'll try to make a real effort to do some serial blogging to make up for my sometimes extended absences? Maybe even twice a day (though I couldn't keep that promise to Dan, either).

This'll be a quickie (insert extension of sex joke here) but because I'm in such a good mood I wanted to get something down (and another here).

First of all, I love that it was a rainy day. I'm not only happy when it rains, but I am pretty much always happy when it rains. (Sort of like how all poodles are dogs but not all dogs are poodles. Does that analogy really fit here? I just try to work that the little token of logic in wherever I can because it blew my eighth grade brain when I heard it.) Rainy days are like forced meditation. They come with a certain calm amid the chaos that I dig and I don't have to chastise myself for not being outside on a beautiful day when I'm pretty much over the sun at this point anyway. I'm totally okay with the fall preview that has been these past few days, though mildly concerned that it will get to 85 degrees overnight. (I don't have any dog analogy for that but it's just plain effed.) As I write I'm watching the wind toss the dark silhouettes of trees around against a barely lit night sky and loving the drama of it. The tree outside my window (my tree outside my window where I write first thing in the morning in the winter months when the floor heater is on underneath my feet) has its late-August scatter of orange leaves, changing before the rest as it does and letting me know that fall is up ahead; nature's flash of high beams. Bring it, I say.

I cooked dinner tonight for the first time in forever. Something about the coolness and a darker sky makes me more eager to head to the kitchen and a hot oven. Nothing crazy, this dinner: GiG's meatloaf (2lbs ground beef, one cup grated Parmesan, one cup Italian seasoned bread crumbs, two eggs, a grated onion and a few fresh shavings of carrot on top to keep the meat moist cooked for about an hour at 425 degrees) that I made with grass-fed beef (and shallots versus a white or yellow onion), broccoli and some local corn. I was going to ask Dan to get a bottle of wine on the way home but my body is still pretty screwed up from yesterday and doesn't need further tampering.

During dinner I said that I wanted to take a bath afterwards (to prepare for an early to bed kind of night) but the fact that the tub is clogged---you know that gnarly residue that circles the tub when the water remains ankle high for the duration of your shower---dissuaded me. Dan, hero that he is, is in there now looking for Nessie and trying to clear things out.

A few minutes ago, he shouted out to me, "I got something! It's just a small one though, I think have to throw it back."



This looks way bigger than it did it real life...like, WAY bigger. Must be something about the angle...

I know it looks disgusting and I'm sorry that I feel so compelled to share it with you. It's a public service I'm providing, really; when was the last time you snaked your drain (insert blah, blah, blah)?

Dan thinks the Tub Monster was just a fluke (ha!), never to be witnessed again.

"I was just a kid then...I got lucky," he said.

I'm getting pretty skeeved out about the state of things in there so let's hope he gets lucky again soon.

(And scene.)

(Driving tomorrow: To chemo (Fri) and beyond! This is my way of telling you I may not be calling these next few days but I'll do the best I can. It's not you, it's me.)

Not Shitty News!

So, I wanted to be sure to fill you on things since obviously there was a lot at stake today.

Good news. I napped.

I kid. But I am only able to kid because we were actually granted good news on the front of GiG. vs. Cancer.

The PET Scan today showed that the tumor in my mom's lung, as well as those in her adrenal glands, have shrunk. Also, there did not seem to be any spread. Good news, indeed. Good, good news.

The intensity of the day coupled with the severe sleep deprivation took its toll on me and there is currently a statewide search for what witnesses describe as a weeping zombie browsing the flat irons at Rite Aid.

For a minute, things looked ugly. My dad had to take my mom to the ER this morning due to severe pain she was experiencing overnight. Unsure how long she would need to stay at the hospital and with my dad having to go to work and my sisters otherwise tied up, there was a brief period of meltdown and panic as I packed up my bags and car and wondered how I was possibly going to stay awake for the drive to RI. Save a 40-minute snooze in the late morning, I had been up straight since 1:15am and by noon my hands were trembling. Fortunately my mom was released, though the cause of the the pain is still a mystery (foreshadowing?) and she is home and safe with smaller tumors inside her than she had before.

Because of the chaos of the ER visit, I don't know much more than this. I don't know how much shrinkage occurred. I don't even know how my mom was affected by the news as I only spoke to her briefly and she was out of it due to the medicine they gave her for the pain. "I skipped drinking," she slurred. "I went right to the drugs." (This, from a woman so resistant to taking medicine that we could not convince her to take even one Vicodin for her pain since her doctor gave her the prescription six months ago.)

But it appears she is responding to the treatment, words I've been waiting to write. Between having surgery taken off the table, the two hospitalizations, the lung inflammation caused from being over-radiated and the early spread of the cancer to her other adrenal gland (it started off just in her left and moved to the right), we had not yet had this moment. We had not yet received any good news.

Tonight, Dan asked me how it felt and while, of course, I am incredibly relieved that the cancer has not progressed, I'm working to allow this victory to penetrate. I am worried about her pain today. Also, they want to start chemo again on Friday. Apparently, the tumor in her lung appears to still be "active" so they want start the treatment immediately. The fact that her adrenal tumors shrank during radiation, which was directed solely at her lung, led her doctor to conclude that the small amount of Taxol (a chemo drug) she received weekly with the radiation (an amount intended only to enhance the radiation versus working systemically as regular chemo doses do) is the drug to which my mom is responding. They hadn't expected her adrenal tumors to shrink at all and the fact that they did (and, of course, that the lung tumor did as well) is apparently really encouraging to her oncologist who wants to act aggressively as a result.

I want to get behind this plan and I absolutely will if it's what my mom wants. It's just hard to see how much better she has felt lately, having had a month and a half off from any treatment, and then ready myself to watch her get weakened and sick again. This is a typical dilemma of chemo though nothing feels typical when it regards a person you love.

Still, my mom's tumors shrank. There is less cancer in her body than there was before. It's important that I allow the good news to have this night.

Then maybe I'll be able to get some sleep.

(Not leaving it to chance though. My word, it's nearly Ambien o'clock.)

(Like mother, like daughter.)

This is really going to screw me up.

It's 4:23am. I'm up. I slept on and off a bit between 11:45 and 1:15 (that is, I fell in and out of sleep while listening to an audio meditation guide...usually a sure thing when trying to get to sleep as the goal is, of course, to stay awake), but have been up straight since then. At 2:30, I got out of bed and cleaned the kitchen. Then I made a cup of green tea and sat on the couch googling flat irons. (WTF is with all the options?) I would have probably cleaned the entire apartment because I had that kind of energy, but I didn't want to wake Dan. I just yawned for the first time in hours.

I've been in an insomniac rough patch for a few weeks now. (Don't you want insomniatic to be a word? It's not.) I thought I was mostly over this business since making big changes last year in an attempt to improve my "sleep hygiene." I was giving my self downtime before bed, trying to hit the sack around the same time every night, rising the same way, but alas, my sleep is messed once more. My biggest struggle with insomnia is this: The less I sleep, the harder it is for me to ever sleep again. My brain gets all kinds of cracked out on no sleep such that I spend nights (and ultimately days) staring out with an aching head, a giant shot nerve of a human. That's where I am now. I could take something but I don't want the dependency or the hangover. (Last night I took an Ambien in an effort to possibly break this sleepless cycle and though I slept, it's not a real, restful slumber when drugs are involved---though it has its perks---and ultimately I felt like I had been up all night anyway.)

The shitty thing is this: Part of what kept me up is thinking about all the things I wanted to accomplish today and this will, no doubt, set me back on all that. Even if I don't crash, a fried brain does not make for good writing (as evidenced here).

Fuck.

The other shitty thing is this: Yesterday (Monday) my mom had a PET Scan so today we will find out the state of things in terms of her cancer; if the tumors have shrunk (not a shitty thing), stayed the same, grown, spread...disappeared. Obviously this is weighing as heavily as all my big plans. (Obviously, all my big plans are a front for this worry entirely.) At some point today---not sure when---my mom's oncology nurse will call with the results and a telephonic family tree will grow (though not in Brooklyn). (Telephonic is totally a word.) I wish I knew what time she was calling. What if I sleep through it? It could, of course, be good news. Between the chemo and the radiation---both of which put my mom on her ass---something had to have been affected. But, say it didn't shrink but it hasn't spread---do you assume it's the chemo holding the cancer back and open your vein to more poison? Say it did shrink but is still there---do you put yourself through hell again in the hopes that it shrinks more? So much hinges on this PET Scan, but in a way it just complicates everything and changes nothing (or complicates nothing but changes everything). If it grew, if it spread---what then? How much of your body can you give to faith in medicine? She did have an MRI the other day and it came back clean, meaning it has not spread to her brain; also a very, very not shitty thing (and a huge relief). Maybe I should just ride this latest good news into the day and curb the worrying. Maybe I should also fly a zebra that shits Skittles to the moon. I prayed yesterday---like actual, hands-folded fucking prayer---several times.

This is why one should not insomnia and blog. I may regret this post at 2pm when I remember writing it. (Maybe there will be news to share by then.) No, this is not nearly as cheerful a subject as slimy, unidentifiable Tub Monsters. (By the way, our tub is clogged---I WAS TOO LATE! I WAS TOO LATE!)

One last thing (and let me be clear that this is not a cry for help): I found this tonight while bouncing around and it made me laugh. Thought I'd share.

That is all. It's almost 5am. No fucking witty ending in sight.

Okay, I did it.

(I didn't really mean to make it a thing of such suspense---and I find it irritating that I did---but I just wasn't near the computer for very long over these last few days.)

I just got all eh, what the fuck about it and armed with my computer printout of Bitchy MTV Girl, I headed for the salon and Lynn chopped the mane:









The cyclops. I did a mock photo shoot with my sister Bec afterwards and though we were laughing the entire time, I couldn't find a picture where I didn't come off looking like a douche (which is sort of what posting incessantly about my hair makes me so...).

Close?

Whatever similarity was achieved that first day was washed down the drain with my shower the next. Unable to recreate the look, my eh, what the fuck thinking had turned to oh, what the fuck was I thinking?! Three days later, I'm still in haircut limbo and feel like I may look a little like Lord Farquaad. I know I love having less hair. And I love the little Donald Duck butt of a ponytail I have after showering. But I'm still working out how to do it myself which, unless Dan is going to give me a blow-out every morning, is pretty important. (I don't know if the fact that I passed up an easy blowjob joke for one about a cartoon ass means I'm growing or regressing.) The bottom line is that it's going to require---and I hate, hate, hate saying this---practice. If I want it to look like it did when Lynn did it, I'm going to have to arm and familiarize myself with her weaponry. The straightening iron will be my go-to gat. I'll have to invest in a good one because for the past couple of days I've been using one from the 80's (really) I found in a cabinet at my parents' house (thankfully I grabbed the straightener and not the crimper) and every time I've used it on the hair closest my face, my eyes burn like they're being exposed to some sort of chemical. This can't be good. Also, I'm supposed to be using a product called "defining whip" which, I learned the hard way, should be applied with some restraint if I don't want to look like I've been washing my hair in a McDonald's frialator.

But I did it. I manned up. And even if I look a little like Toad from Super Mario Brothers,



I'm glad my sack is in tact.

If not my pride.



Still douchy.

I got a haircut today but I don't have the time to upload the pictures so whether or not I manned up will have to remain a mystery.

And that's all I can say right now because I need, need, need to go to sleep.

P.S. When I googled "really bad female haircuts" to find a image for this entry, the previously featured bitchy MTV girl picture came up...huh.