I wish I could always grace these entries with
sweetness and light, all gushy and yippie, but some days and nights won’t have
it. Today was a rough one, with the first big curtain (or wave, or swoop, or a moniker
I haven’t settled on yet) of nausea and vomiting making its debut into this
treatment mix milieu early this morning.
Ugh-ugh. We should acknowledge up front, now
that I’ve dragged you into my reality, that I intentionally forgot to take my
prophylactic anti-nausea meds after chemo. I was supposed to do this in the
evening and morning after treatment, to ward off the queasy that was anticipated
to be coming ‘round right about now. But, I wasn’t feeling sick, so I made it slip
my mind.
Ugha-ugha. I
won’t mind-slip like that again.
There are lots of slang ways of saying nausea/vomiting
(sorry, but if you’re eating, you should put your utensils down right about here, just
for a paragraph or two.). And, because there’s no end to purveyors of the muse,
some of them are quite creative. We have the usuals:
Hurl, puke, spew, upchuck, barf, ralph and toss your
cookies. Not very clever, but good enough to make the point, and without much ambiguity.
We get it right away.
We also find some funny, even witty retching
reportage when we’re searching for how to describe our (notice how I’m dragging
you into this) GI upsets. Here are a few of my new discoveries. Hey, bear with
me, this took a little research, and it did take my mind off my body for a bit.
We have:
--- “peristaltic pyrotechnics”: A sure favorite for
the nursey-scientists and lovers of alliteration among us.
--- “greet your guts”: Also for the alliterati, but
more appealing to the no-frills crowd.
--- “technicolor yawn”: Reaching a bit, but one that
lands nicely when you work for the visual and it becomes clear.
--- “paint the town red … and orange and green and
pink”: This evokes a real ba-da-barf, ba-da-boom kind of feeling. Cute.
The list is almost endless, and honorable mentions go
to “multi-colored organic fountain” and “time to get out the ol’ sawdust bucket”
and “looking for aardvarks,” and “doing the hoakey croakey,” but I’ll leave you
with my new favorite:
“Yelling at the ants.”
That one is just in time for the summer season, but
try not to think of it at your next picnic.
That past me, the rest of the day just drifted by. I
must’ve mostly slept through the radiation. I remember the background music,
now a welcome staple when I’m in the mold, but whatever it was didn’t get through
the fatigue. It was better than silence, but I heard it as Muzak filler, which
was just what I needed today, anyway.
My new day’s resolution? Take my medications as
ordered. I don’t know why I need to tell myself that, but sometimes, when I
think I know better than me what’s best for me, I just don’t listen. I’ll try
to shape up ... and keep it down.
More as we go, El
