The unrelenting poison

Chemo is indeed poison. It is a poison that kills you just enough. It is introduced to the body in an intravenously way and makes its way through the blood stream. It attacks all in its path, hopefully the mutated cells that make up the cancer, then backs off enough to let you live. You know, with no immune system, in bed in pain, taking an assortment of pain killers and anti-nausea pills and generally feeling quite awful. Like after listening to a Coldplay album. 

It gets worse after time. The body can take the poison all right for awhile, but there is a breaking point where the body throws its arms in the air and waves the white flag of surrender. Writing this it seems like chemotherapy is less of a medical remedy and more like a dare concocted at a trailer park. Vickie has been taking in the chemo "medicine" every other week. She would feel pretty awful until the next Sunday after a treatment and by then she could function a bit more. One week bad, the next week tolerable. But it doesn't do that anymore. Now it's just two weeks of feeling like you've just attended a Brad Pitt film festival. (I know a lot of you might think that wouldn't be a bad time, but come on, when was the last time you actually wanted to see one of his movies? Like a thousand years and counting) It has made life different, as you would guess. 

I feel that now I'm more of a caregiver than a husband. More of a babysitter than a father. And worse yet, I feel like a Mexican washer woman down at the creek washing a load of clothes for a few pesos each, only to come home to a dead beat, drunken husband. The man who takes those few pesos physically from me to go down to the bar for some tortilla soup and tequila shots, just to come home late and drunk, smelling like another woman's perfume. I won't take it Carlos! I won't!

Okay that went to a weird place, but nevertheless the sentiment is still there. 

We are getting a lot of help though. From our church, from our family, from friends, from the cancer center. The list is plentiful and willing. It has been very nice, but does seem sometimes we are out welcoming our stay a bit. Trust me, I wish we weren't. I would give anything not to have to lean on so many, but all I can be is grateful and all I can do is reciprocate the service in some capacity later on in life.

Still, there's fun you can have with is all. Every time Vickie does anything I always tell her how 'inspiring' she's being. When people ask how she is I get to say "she's dying inside, OKAY." Then act all indignant and huff away. The other day I told someone that my wife having cancer was the best thing that happened to our sex life, just to see what they would do. They ended up saying nothing and walked away. I laughed until I about pitched up a lung.