Round 3

I fucking hate chemo. I'm trying to take it all in stride and be grateful for the treatment, but I've sort of developed a fear of chemo day and what happens later at night. The nausea, the full-head headaches, the uncontrollable sobbing, "dead arms" (that seem to perplex everyone), pain in my veins, insomnia. The day of chemo, I have a voice in the back of my head going, "Oh, god, why me?" I'm sick of popping pills, being poked, and now I gotta poke myself every other day! The whole length of the chemo treatment is not even half over. I've got 5 more cycles after this one. And holy christ, that shit ain't cheap--those self-injections to boost my WBC's, which by the way, will cause additional achiness in my body. Just for one cycle of chemo, I gotta pick up my $1700 prescription. Thank god Henry's got awesome extended medical healthcare and that Pharmacare kicks in a chunk too, so that in the end, we only end up having to pay $50 each time (without any of the hassle of trying to get approval for the drug that we probably would have had to go through in the U.S.)! So yeah, sitting next to our leftovers, soy milk, and almond butter are my little vials of joy.

It was kinda funny yesterday though. While I was getting my chemo, a nurse walked in and stared at me and Henry a little. Then she said, "You're Brandy, right? I heard you on the radio yesterday! I recognize you from your blog except you're wearing glasses!" So I guess she read this little blog here after listening to the CBC interview and saw that I was getting chemo, and came into the room to say hi! That was neat! (She also said that my kids were cute too--just in case you didn't know that for yourself.) The other nurse who was giving me my chemo said, "What's the website?" There were two other older people in there, so the nurse said, "Oh, I'll email it to you." And then she said to me that she agreed with the URL. So to the nurse who reads the blog--HELLO and thanks for reading!

Anyway, don't get me wrong. The whole cycle doesn't suck for much of the time--just about the first week. After that, I try to build myself back up by doing things and getting outside and everything. But I just felt like whining a little bit just now. The blog is the Good, the Bad, and the Stupid (stupid in a good way sometimes, stupid in a bad way). Many things are worse than this, but right now, I'm wallowing in the suck.