No Sex, Lots of Drugs, a little rock'n'roll...

...that's life now. but at least i ain't on no macrobiotic diet. H and i went to this two-day Inspire seminar last week. Inspire is this nonprofit org that dishes out complementary cancer treatment (complementary, as in "in conjunction with," not meaning "free," but a lot of the stuff is free). so they had this two-day seminar about how to enhance life with cancer and cancer treatments. some of the stuff was good, but as far as the nutrition suggestions go--not our cup of tea. when you got cancer, the words "quality of life" come up often--and a macrobiotic diet isn't my idea of a good quality of life. they fed us this macrobiotic lunch, and it was like someone pulled stuff out of the dirt and served it up with beans and zero salt. fucking gross, man!

but today we had our one-and-a-half hour appointment with one of Inspire's doctors, and the cool thing is that she gave me free vitamins that Inspire especially formulated for cancer patients. free is good.

i'm taking a lot of drugs. it's funny how quickly the stash of prescriptions gets larger and larger. i have to take drugs that offset the side effects of other drugs that offset the side effects of chemo. i turned to H last week on our way into the drugstore and said, "i feel like we live here." our daily trip to the drug store.

anyway, with all these meds, i'm feeling alright. the doc today looked at my food, meds, and vitamins log and said that i'm doing better than normal because i'm doing the right things (despite my refusal to go macrobiotic). some of our friends got us some korean red ginseng extract, which looks like tar, but apparently does me a lot of good. so i mix it in with a soy chai latte a couple times a day, and it's pretty good. i've had enough energy to finish the manuscript of the book i'm editing, and i'm almost done with proofreading! i'm very excited to get this book done and out!

H and i booked a cruise for next month. it's kinda silly because it goes from seattle to victoria to nanaimo back to seattle, so it's not like we're actually leaving where we live! but it's three days of nonstop eating and relaxing, and the price was really cheap ($179/person!), so it'll be a nice little getaway. i'm hoping that i won't be too miserable from the chemo that i'm having a few days before the cruise.

i won't be able to go to Pennsylvania for thanksgiving (the American one) like we wanted to because i have to stick around in case my chemo needs to be adjusted. so i told my family to not worry cuz the next time they see me, i'll probably be sporting a perky, bigger new rack. speaking of, we get to meet with the surgeon tomorrow for a consultation. so we'll see exactly how big of a rack i can get. then i can revise the title of this post.

Cool Hair!

I was walking back from my therapeautic touch appointment (which I missed--long stupid story), and this woman was coming at me from an intersection and shouted, "Cool hair!" with her thumbs pointed up. I honestly had no idea what she was talking about, so I looked around. She pointed at me and smiled. I thought she was insane. But then I realized that she was talking about my hair, and then I felt bad. I hate it when those things happen. I just wasn't feeling like, "Oh, yeah, she must be talking about how cool I am!"

I feel so anti-cool. I've got perpetual heartburn, which totally sucks. I get heartburn if I drink water, if I swallow, if I sneeze. I wear fuzzy slippers with hard soles around the house so that I go clomp, clomp, clomp. Last night, some friends came over for a So You Think You Can Dance marathon extravaganza, and it sure pooped me out. And now, I'm using the word "poop" in a nonliteral sense! I've lost my damn mind.

Went to a naturopath yesterday. He's the brother of a friend, and they don't mess around. But to be honest, as much as everything costs, you have to wonder--is this really going to work? I'm sure that level of skepticism is present for many. But in explaining how chemo cashes in on the short-term effects for the long-term costs (or something like that, I was never good at economics), it seems like the naturopath thing is the thing to do. I mean, I like my head. I'd like to keep my head working like it has been working. So we'll give her a go and see what happens.

I'm seeing an art therapist today too! You know, with all these therapies and stuff--maybe cancer isn't so bad! I wouldn't be seeing all these different people otherwise.

But no, I'd rather not have cancer. Cuz this heartburn still sucks.