MegaYak

The jury's still out on whether or not the chemotherapy's working, but the Decadron is as effective as ever! It's 3:30 in the morning and I'm wide awake.

Chemotherapy today went smoothly. NurseLisa is among my favorites -- clearly, as she's allowed a real name, unlike UnsolicitedAdviceNurse and FrogNurse and NurseBubbles. Here's why we like NurseLisa:

1. She knows how to -- and does -- maintain a sterile environment on all occasions that call for a sterile environment. You'd be surprised by how often this doesn't happen.

2. She can find a vein. She doesn't always find a vein on the first try, but she finds one, and she does so with a confident manner. I occasionally call her The Vein Whisperer.

3. She makes Eric laugh.

So, I spent many hours in the blue plastic recliner, just a few feet from my darling Eric, and then I came home & played silly computer games and searched YouTube for music. We ate pizza. Eric went to his book club. That was that.

I think I already mentioned that Eric and I missed quite a few planned activities in September. Two plays, an evening of drinks w/ old friends, and a 3-day music festival come readily to mind. We missed a lot, and a lot happened.

For instance: I found myself unable to effectively walk. For the first time in my life (other than checking out of a hospital) I was wheeled about in a wheelchair, because the pain was simply too intense for me to walk. And then two weeks later I danced (for a few songs, anyway) at a Phil & Friends concert at the Greek.

The juxtaposition can make my head spin, as can the rift in the space time continuum which makes my work day so madly paced and most everything else so oddly slow.

My hair is everywhere. It had grown to 4 or so inches, but I cut it down to an inch today. I learned from my two past experiences with hair loss that the process of losing my hair is more difficult than actually living with the loss.

The process is upsetting. It's distinctly ouchy, and the falling hair goes everywhere, everywhere.... clogging the sinks and shower, clinging to shoulders and back, making it's scritchyscratchy way down my collar, into my coffee cup, aaaalll over the pillow and sheets.

It's clumped in corners and stuck to mirrors.

It's upsetting and embarrassing and omnipresent. If I touch my hair, it falls out. I've accidentally pulled out entire... I don't know what to call it .... locks of hair. With my hair so short, and so much more thin than it was in my bright-red-thick-haired youth, how can I possibly be producing so much distressing hair debris?

I need to shave it. And I would have, already, except I'm smarting from one person's insensitive comment.

I prepped a few folks at work about my impending baldness. There's a woman who sits next-ish to me, who's new this year -- thought it would be easier on both of us if she had advance warning. And there were a handful of others who I felt might need a little extra head's up to the hair off.

One of them -- Anger Management Nurse -- who, by the way, once told me that she knew I must be praying for a quick death (yes, and those were her exact words), listened to my story, and then told me (with a bit of a knowing smile) that my hair was quite adequate. She certainly couldn't tell that it was coming out, and she didn't think anyone else could tell either. And then she added something.... some bit of smirky something.... that indicated that my only reason to shave my head would be to draw attention to myself. She implied that I wanted the attention.

I think it's absurd for her uninformed commentary to impact my actions, but there you have it. I didn't strangle her or cry or look at her mean. I'm not going to hold a grudge and I'll shave my head soon. But for now, for whatever reason -- although I know it shouldn't -- her words have stuck in my craw.

I'll get over it soon. And then I'll just be a bald woman. The SF Bay Area is as fine a place as any to be a bald woman, and I'll handle the daily trickle of people at work who come to me with looks of horror or sadness or tears and offer me hugs & condolences & prayers & stories of miraculous recoveries or tortured deaths because they think my cancer has "come back".

I'll let the grocery store clerks and the new barristas at starbucks try to figure out if I'm a man or a middle aged lesbian, or a poster child for the Stop Smoking movement.

All of this fun awaits. And sleep, too. Sleep awaits me. Hopefully soon.