Dear All,
Catherine here again. Today was a beautiful rainy fall day, and Kip and I took a walk around the neighbourhood and to see Mimico Creek where the ducks were being swept along to Lake Ontario. Kip woke up with a fair bit of bone pain, (from the growth hormone shot) but it's managed with tylenol. We have deduced that day 5 or 6 - it seems when the blood levels are starting to go down - are hard days emotionally. This makes some sense as we really are our chemistry. Personally, I am finding it helpful to find patterns in the cycles of chemotherapy and Kip is being good natured about my need to chart stuff.
The Britney Spears episode of Glee tonight hit the spot. Yay for the fact that evening tv just keeps getting better.
One more treatment of the AC protocol, and then the next cocktail is called Taxol, which generally has easier side-effects than the present concoction. It takes longer to be administered so we're thinking about ways to pass the time in 'chemo daycare' as they call it. It will be 3 hours once we're in. I am personally voting for reading poetry. Other thoughts about how to pass three hours? Or, if you have great poetry (or prose) suggestions, please send on to us.
Love to all,
Catherine
Poetry: I'd grab a volume of Neruda.....pretty much any one will work! Or Seamus Heaney or Sharon Olds or Diane Ackerman or Mary Oliver. But actually....turn to my old love Eduardo Galeano and dip into The Book of Embraces--short bits, funny, beautiful, moving....it doesn't matter where you start or stop. Nothing is really long enough to be in "the middle of" so it's easy to pick up and put down. Prose but reads like poetry.....so good for the soul.
ReplyDeleteO I love Neruda, especially in Spanish.
ReplyDeleteThere are so many poets... I'll have to dig through the collection Judy and I have... so many poets...
Catherine, I totally understand your need to chart. When I was on sick leave many years ago, I kept a huge 3-ring binder with my notes and charts, clippings, research. I would take it to my MD appointments. She shook her head and said, "Roberta, you can do all the research you want to, if it makes you feel better, but it won't make you healthy faster. You still have to go through this one step at a time." I think I told that story to Kip way back when. So, Catherine, chart away. Anything that organises the days and passes the time, is helpful.
I can see it now .... charts all over the house, posted on doors, windows, walls, bookcases, colour-coded. Catherine in lab coat and cat's eye glasses studded with rhinestones, laser pointer in hand, explaining the mysteries of chemo... re-group... now put it in ppt and Kip adds the DJ mash-up ... voila! We have an academic presentation.
Or was this all a dream? rowing merrily down the stream?
You can't go wrong with e.e.cummings...here is an example:
ReplyDeletei carry your heart with me by E. E. Cummings
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
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It sounds as if this is the kind of closeness you're experiencing together, albeit trying circumstances. Thinking of you both.
Love, Carol-Lynn