A Spork in the Road

Despite all the evidence of this blog, I am not in fact a person who is normally obsessed with myself. Until I got my passport to Cancerland, I did not even weigh myself regularly. Now I know my weight, my temperature, my blood pressure, my current Complete Blood Count, my Complete Metabolic Panel. Now I get very, very excited about bowel movements.

I’ve also become a person who is totally fine with people sending me stuff on a regular basis. Cancer Swag has revolutionized my attitude towards receiving gifts. It used to be that when someone nosed around about sending me a gift, I felt awkward and tried to get them not to do it. Now I’m like, “Here’s my mailing address, and I suggest UPS 2-day shipping so it gets here faster.” It’s getting so that when I tell strangers I have lymphoma I also hand them a list of books and DVDs I don’t have.

I knew cancer was big money for the medical industry. I didn’t realize Amazon and iTunes made out so well on the deal.

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And now, we bring you the Daily Notification of Beth’s Bodily Status:

I have a little bit of persistent neuropathy in my hands: my fingertips feel numbish and tingly, as does the bottom edge of my palm. Makes detail work a little sketchy. (This is caused, I believe, by the Vinblastine blasting my nerves.) But otherwise, today, I feel mostly human. I slept about eight hours last night, instead of the ten to eleven hours I’ve been sleeping, and I feel more energized and mentally alert than I have since — well, since my diagnosis, really.

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So I’m not over my needle phobia after all.

Well the thing is, I got to be okay with having blood drawn over the past month. Even IV needles weren’t bugging me too much. But I’m still getting used to having a port, and it still kind of freaks me out. The port is a small round thingamajig about the size of a stack of quarters that’s implanted under the skin below my collarbone. It has a thin catheter that runs up under the skin and feeds into my jugular vein. This way I have easy access to a major vein and they don’t have to shoot up my arms every time I go for chemo, blood tests, etc.

The port is truly wonderful, but you understand why the whole system is a little freaky if one thinks about it too much.

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Our faithful Cocker Spaniel, Sudz (Beer Sudz Lamour Barcaski-Long) — food aficionado, sometime Rottweiller-puppy-impersonator, fart machine extraordinaire — went to the great dog park in the sky during the wee hours of the morning.

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Been a rough weekend, I won’t say it hasn’t. Sore mouth, sore self, lots of anxiety as reality sets in. Now that the tests are done, and treatment has started, and I’ve done all the research that I can stand to do, I’m left with the daily existence of this thing.

So I’m hugely thankful for work. I could’ve sat around and moped all day today, but instead I had work to do. And I feel immensely better for it. Not just distracted — I actually feel physically better after putting in a few hours of focused work.

My jaw aches and my throat’s a little tender and the tips of my fingers are tingly and I get weird aches in weird places at weird times. But I’m moving forward.

I’d like to thank Rick Kantrell, too, for a wonderful and much-needed pep talk on the importance of positive thinking. If athletes can visualize peak performance before an event, I can visualize peak performance of my body in this marathon I’m facing.