A Spork in the Road

I finished re-reading the first Harry Potter book today, and it was just wonderful.

I remember there being a lot of swirling debate around the HP books when they first came out (and, I guess, even long after they’d been out). This critic attacking, that critic praising, the endless evaluation and opinion-spouting that inevitably twaddle behind massive success.

For my part, let me say this: I sat for a solid hour and forgot my anxieties and my sore mouth and the incoming tide of realizing that I have six months of chemo in front of me and instead, I lived at Hogwarts. My only regret was that I didn’t have the second book sitting right beside me when I finished the first.

A writer who can cut through all that noise and hold my undivided attention has my loyal and undying love.

Mouth sores are looming! No! Fight them with Biotene and baking soda!

Also, today my wrists ache. My nurse said usually the steroids go for the knees, but since I work at the computer it may be affecting my wrists instead. Rest and Tylenol do the trick. Plus I should spring for one a them thar ergonomic keyboard thingummybobs.

(I woke up in the wee hours of the morning feeling so good that I got too excited to go back to sleep, so the lack of sleep isn’t helping. But I’m still excited. I want to be the Hermione of Hodgkin’s: I want to go for my next PET scan and have the doctors say, “Wow! We’ve never seen it melt away so fast!”)

I’m actually feeling okay aside from an acidic mouth and achy wrists: not too tired, no nausea, appetite and sense of taste/smell returning. But achy wrists = short post. So… ciao!

I was going to post about our trip to Italy today, complete with photos, but I was having password issues and I gave up for the night.

Instead, I will share a bizarre tidbit:

My wonderful father, ever generous and thoughtful, is sending me a portable DVD player so I can watch movies while I’m in chemo. (This is not the bizarre part.) I’m extremely excited about this, so I logged in to UPS to track the package.

Know where it shipped from?

Hodgkins, Illinois.

NOW tell me the universe does not have a sense of humor. (Albeit a black one.)

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I feel eerily good today. Upbeat, no nausea, no mouth sores, plenty of energy. My appetite’s noticeably altered, but I’m eating small, frequent, healthful meals. My ability to taste is diminished by about 60%, and my sense of smell about the same. I woke up at 3:00am feeling ecstatic. I kept thinking, “I started treatment and I’m beating the cancer RIGHT NOW.”

I floss every night and brush after every meal. I’m drinking a gallon and a half of water a day. I’m doing yoga. I’m praying.

Cancer is, so far, the best thing that’s happened to me in a long time.
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Juicy is the only word I can think of to describe how I felt during chemo today. Not woozy, not queasy, not exactly loopy. Just… juicy. Filled with juice. As if my body were saying, “Um, we don’t want to freak you out, but we thought you should know there’s a whole lot of stuff floating around in here that we didn’t make. Just sayin’.”

Read on for a blow by blow account of Beth’s First Chemo…
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