HOME SWEET 'n SOUR HOME
I have been home for three days now and it is wonderful! All my concerns about magical thinking and idealizing my home were unfounded. I absolutely love being here. I am never cold!!! It rains part of each day but the rest is truly beautiful. It is the kind of warm that can be too hot if you remain in the direct sun too long but becomes very comfortable as soon as you step into the shade. And I so appreciate seeing bright blue sky every day. Jeffrey took great care of the plants and flowers on my terrace garden (the only place I can have flowers since the iguanas eat the flowers and tender shoots everywhere else!). This is a container garden that I planned while sick in bed up north two years ago. So my heart sang when I returned and saw the beauty of it all in full flower.
However, all is not perfect here on Paradise Point. Tomorrow I will go to the hospital and begin the new course of chemotherapy called Velcade. I just read about it online and the long, long list of side-effects included, much to my horror, nausea and vomiting and extreme fatigue which I doubt has become as popular as extreme ironing and is equally appalling to me! As much as I tell myself that these are only possibilities, I think the nausea thing is a sure bet. And that scares me. Big time!
It feels so perverse to realize, as I sit here feeling perfectly normal and actually really good listening to the sounds of the spring birds and glancing up to see the waning light on the placid river, that tomorrow I will voluntarily allow my body to be ravaged by chemicals designed to kill. And among other things what will be killed is this delightful sense of feeling really good. How badly I will feel I don't know. Nor do I know for how long. Tonight I feel a bit like I imagine soldiers must feel the night before a battle. Maybe this is what is meant by "battling cancer". I have resisted the idea that I am at war within my own body, but tonight I am afraid of this unpleasant but inevitable unknown. And so, for the first time, but I suspect not the last, I look out at the river-reflected sunset and silently echo Jesus in Gethsemane:" Father, if it be your will, let this cup pass from me."
I have been home for three days now and it is wonderful! All my concerns about magical thinking and idealizing my home were unfounded. I absolutely love being here. I am never cold!!! It rains part of each day but the rest is truly beautiful. It is the kind of warm that can be too hot if you remain in the direct sun too long but becomes very comfortable as soon as you step into the shade. And I so appreciate seeing bright blue sky every day. Jeffrey took great care of the plants and flowers on my terrace garden (the only place I can have flowers since the iguanas eat the flowers and tender shoots everywhere else!). This is a container garden that I planned while sick in bed up north two years ago. So my heart sang when I returned and saw the beauty of it all in full flower.
However, all is not perfect here on Paradise Point. Tomorrow I will go to the hospital and begin the new course of chemotherapy called Velcade. I just read about it online and the long, long list of side-effects included, much to my horror, nausea and vomiting and extreme fatigue which I doubt has become as popular as extreme ironing and is equally appalling to me! As much as I tell myself that these are only possibilities, I think the nausea thing is a sure bet. And that scares me. Big time!
It feels so perverse to realize, as I sit here feeling perfectly normal and actually really good listening to the sounds of the spring birds and glancing up to see the waning light on the placid river, that tomorrow I will voluntarily allow my body to be ravaged by chemicals designed to kill. And among other things what will be killed is this delightful sense of feeling really good. How badly I will feel I don't know. Nor do I know for how long. Tonight I feel a bit like I imagine soldiers must feel the night before a battle. Maybe this is what is meant by "battling cancer". I have resisted the idea that I am at war within my own body, but tonight I am afraid of this unpleasant but inevitable unknown. And so, for the first time, but I suspect not the last, I look out at the river-reflected sunset and silently echo Jesus in Gethsemane:" Father, if it be your will, let this cup pass from me."
2 comments:
Thinking about you and hoping you are doing ok after enduring today. I'm glad that you are home. There really is no place like home.
Robert
I pray this cup passes for you quickly and completely, with minimal to no discomfort. I will be thinking of you often. I love you. Anna
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