Sorry, everyone.

Radiation is making every joint in my body ache unbelievably. I still seem to be battling the aftereffects of my last Chemo round. Not up to writing much lately, it’s taking all my strength just to get vertical!

More later, I think. I reckon I should be able to gauge were I am on the side-effects rollercoaster sometime next week.

Hope all of you are well and happy.

So yes, it’s 2:30am and I can’t sleep. I can’t sleep because I feel nauseous and wired and my mind is splitting and splintering in all different directions. I just want this all to be over. I want my life to go back to the banality of worrying about money, what to feed the kids and whether my arse looks fat in that pair of jeans.

I am on my last round of Chemo. For me, each round has taken a little more of the punch out of me. Makes sense. You start with a normal blood count, and each round, the starting point is lower and lower. I started this round with only 26% white blood cells — which, apparently, is a good count. I count myself lucky that I have not had to have Chemo delayed due to low blood counts.

Still. 26% ain’t much.

So I am dragging my tired seasick self around the house, trying to maintain some normality for the girls and The Boy, and it is getting mighty wearisome.

Hopefully, this time next week, I will be in the swing of full-time daily Radiation, plus a weekly Chemo session. And we will have this nasty fucker on the ropes.

I like the idea of Radiation. It’s not as nebulous as Chemo. Chemo scours your body invisibly looking for those rogue cells but you can’t really see it working. My insides are as clean from cancer as if they’d been scrubbed in a dishwasher. I could donate even  my long suffering liver if I got hit by a bus tomorrow. But I can’t see it, I can’t see it working — apart from a slight reduction in the size of my tumour and some generally softening all round. (Didn’t lose my hair , nyah-nyah!).

Radiation, (I imagine) is like bringing out the M-16. I want to see that thing shrink daily, I want to know it’s being bombarded with nasty stuff. I like to imagine it skittering and gibbering with fear, trying to hide from the all powerful DEATH RAY.

Bring.

It.

On.

I am so over this.

So I’ve spent a heap of the last umpteen years on Xanga bitching, cursing, and moaning about the Boy. There’s still plenty to bitch and moan about, believe me.

He still:

• Leaves the toilet seat up even though he is 1/4 of the gender balance in the household. Nothing like a cold wet bum full of toilet water at 3am to make you want to call the poop-god down upside his head.
• Is unable to work out that if HE is hungry, then the bowl-eyed children clustered round the kitchen counter might also be hungry too. Nope, his sandwich and Mummy makes everything else.
• Puts the Lagostina saucepans in the dishwasher instead of washing them by hand. Ditto the Global knives. ACK. Obviously, we (I) bought those before we got married cos there ain’t no way we can afford them now bub.
• Shouts too much at the kids and is overly fond of pronouncements such as “Things are going to change around here now”, usually followed by “I am going to crack down hard on you girls.. blah bliddy blah-blah”
• Still can’t cook anything but Baked Beans on Toast, bad scrambled eggs and fried eggs sandwiches. Must be a Pommie thing.
• Leaves his dirty work shirt and socks all over the house then craps all over the girls for doing the same. Pot? Kettle?

But what the hey. Reviewing that list, there’s really not too much to divorce him for,  is there? My faults are numerous:

I still:

• Hate housework, find it demeaning and can find all sorts of reasons to shove things in closets and slam the doors shut. My oven has not been cleaned since my sister did it two years ago.
• Throw my dirty clothes around too. Although to be fair, I am usually the one who picks them up.
• Would rather read a book than talk to a human being.
• Have a phone phobia. The home phone is always on ‘silent’ and I only answer my mobile phone if the caller ID is someone I know.
• Yell at the kids.
• Can get lost in doing esoteric computer stuff like learning to design 3D models or draw hair in Adobe Illustrator.
• Feel sorry for my self too damn much and relive the past while listening to David  Gray which is almost grounds for committal.

But the Boy has stepped up.

• He comes home in an instant when he calls and I am crying because I can’t cope today with school runs or dinner or myself.
• He writes me little notes before he leaves work at 6:30am in the morning telling me he loves me.
• He calls me throughout the day to see that I am managing.
• He comes to Chemo day even though the sight of someone he loves being injected with poison nearly makes him pass out.
• He does the laundry (well to be fair because I am laundry-blind and will go out and buy 12 new pairs of  knickers rather than do a load.)
• He is managing to reheat dinners and feed the kids before 9pm which, believe me, is a first in the ten years we’ve been together.
• He makes me cups of tea without being asked.
• He buys chocolate without being asked. (Major props here, folks!)
• He kisses my head every two hours when he takes my temperature.
• He has not YET complained that since I’ve begun treatment, I wake up every two hours each night, often waking him as well — and I don’t have an hour commute to and from work.

After all my years of bitching, I am thinking that I got a pretty good guy. All the faults are chaff, all the rest is golden.

So time to eat my words. If you read my blog a couple of entries ago about people who suck up your drama, I was pretty unkind about ‘crap lasagna’ and people who dropped by and offered to do stuff.

I eat every one of those words.

At current count, I have, in my freezer:

• 3 lasagnas
• 1 tuna casserole
• 1 chorizo pasta bake
• 1 cassoulet
• 1 quiche.

Other things:

• I also have a collection of mad hats from friends who can just ‘whip things up’.
• My children have been ferried to school – there and back, taken to Brownies and other extracurricular activities. No request necessary.
• I have a top of the line juicer that a friend ‘lent’ me until I ‘don’t want it anymore’.

These things are all from friends or acquaintances who have lives, children of their own, jobs to go to and many other things they could be doing besides helping me out. They blow me away.

However, this isn’t about them. This is about one particular woman who was the target of that mean-spirited blog. She isn’t a friend. She was barely an acquaintance (her husband and mine ride the same train to work and like each other). I have described her to my friends as ‘mad as a cut snake’. She is overbearing, gossipy, talkative to the point of verbal diarrhea, pushy and completely thick skinned. I avoid her whenever possible. I have been known to hide in my car when I saw her walk by, and duck into public restrooms when I saw her approach.

And yet, the minute she heard I was in strife, she has managed to supply my family with Jamie Oliver quality meals – three at a time. She has offered to take me to radiation. she drops by with her bags full of meals, (included fully prepared vegetable side dishes), chats for 10 minutes — and leaves. She brushes off all thanks, and gets back into her car and back to her 3 children family, where she has, I am sure, her own issues and chores to deal with.

The reason she is doing this? Because (and this shames me mightily) I once had her over with her family for a BBQ because I felt sorry for her. She had a great time. She tells everyone she had a great time. I think she had a great time because no one has ever invited her anywhere, and she was so pleased to be included.  And I never ever asked her back. Ever.

Because all my friends bagged me endlessly for it. How’s that for being a wonderful human being?

I must point out, she has insulted one friend, called the parking control officer on another and managed to scare the crap out of another’s kid. As I said, she is slightly if not totally twisted in some sort of mood disorder kind of way. Still, I am not so sure I wasn’t using that as an excuse to maintain my so-called head honcho status amongst my cronies. How pathetic. How weak. How despicable of me.

Dammit, if I am going to learn anything from this cancer journey I am on — I am going to learn not to be such an arrogant ass.

I am not Queen of the Neighbourhood.

I am not judge and jury of who is ‘appropriate’ and who isn’t.

I am not the Cool Kid in School.

Who the hell do I think I am?

So I’ve reversed my position. If people are sucking up my drama — so be it. They are entitled to at this point. There have been times in the past month where I was weeping at the point of having to cook my family a meal, I was so tired and nauseous. And then, at the door, would appear this woman with food, and a huge weight was lifted. That sort of kindness cannot be underestimated. In my arrogance, and in my assurance that I can handle everything all the time all by myself – I was doing just that.

What a self-centred bitch I can be. How cynical to assume that everyone does things just to make themselves feel better. Maybe there are people who are just nice and kind and sweet — crazy or not. Okay, I am not one of them. But it’s illuminating to this particular cynic that there might be.

So apologies to all. And apologies especially to YOU, Crazy-Mad-Snake-Woman.

Been offline  since the oldest child decided to reformat the hard drive. Bad bad bad. Full marks for curiosity, still , she must learn to click the ‘cancel’ button when she hasn’t a clue what she is doing. I am writing this on my deck off a laptop, which I HATE because my big ol’ fingers make lots of typing mistakes.

Second round of chemo does not appear to be as bad as the first. Mind you, the first was so goddammitty awful, death might have been preferable. So far, merely fatigue, crankiness, er.. bowel issues, tummy issues and general lack of appetite. And yeah, my hair is starting to thin. I look like an ugly KD Laing.

Thinking about death. Was thinking that I could become reconciled to it had I not had children to leave behind. When it’s just you, well, then, you make your peace, sort  yourself out and face the facts. But leaving kids behind without a mother, just tears me up. So onward we go through the puking and the nausea and the sleeplessness and all the other nastiness because you don’t quit when you have kids. You just don’t. Or you shouldn’t have had them in the first place.

The Boy would survive. He’d sort himself out, grieve etc, and find himself another woman because that is what men are programmed to do, and I have no quarrel with that. But the girls would be damaged, I think. Or become Prime Ministers.

Meet the Girls.

Flush with victory at their school sports day. They are perfection, despite my best attempt in turning them into mediocre little brats who trawl supermarket aisles whining — they flourish in spite of me.

This is why I am going through chemo and radiation and surgery. So I can beat up their boyfriends.

(Note:  I love all my friends who’ve stepped into the fray this past week. You are gems. This isn’t written about you. This is written about those people who suck off my drama and who I wouldn’t have darken my doorstep in the ‘good days’. Now it’s all about them. Again.)

Okay, here’s a list of things that bug me (and by extension ALL cancer patients, because I speak on behalf of them, doncha know):

Things Not To Do:

1. If we say we don’t need another meal cooked for us — we don’t. The freezer is stocked, the dog has put on 8 kilos and you cook like shit anyway. We appreciate the gesture, know you want to help — but fuck off with your crap lasagna.
2. Under no circumstances, are you ‘coming over on Friday to clean my house’. WTF?  I am sorry if my personal hygiene offends you, or that you can see dust bunnies on my bathroom floor — but tough tits. This family cleans its own house, maybe badly, but I am actually quite offended that you think this helps me. All this does is make me feel inadequate. So again with the fuck off.
3. When you ask if I am alright, and I say ‘okay’, then that’s the end of the conversation. I don’t necessarily want to spill my guts each and every time we talk —  about mortality, what it’s like to have the Big C, and (use Big Sad Voice here) How. I. Am. Coping.  Unless you have a pipeline to the future, shut up and smile and accept my lie when I choose to tell it.
4. Don’t call just to talk. Most of the time I am trying to sleep. And furthermore, long-winded weepy messages on the answering machine WAKE ME UP and make me wish you had cancer not me. So there.
5. On the above topic, don’t get your knickers in a knot because (gasp) you called 3 days ago and I haven’t returned your call. Maybe I am recovering from all the fucking telephone calls. Maybe I am puking. Maybe I am sleeping. Whatever. I still like you. Or will, unless you make an unreturned phone call an issue.

This What To Do:

1. Leave food (if you insist) outside my door and then text me or my hub to tell me it’s there. Don’t come in for a cup of tea. Really, don’t. You didn’t come in before I was sick, why would you want to now? My energy lasts 10 minutes, but my impulses last longer and must be overridden.
2. If you DO come in. Leave soon. Don’t make me ask you. It’s embarrassing and rude and feels ungrateful.
3. Tell me you will take my kids to and from school, or for a bit without me asking. It’s really hard to feel like I can’t look after them, and I worry. They also demand a lot of emotion from me lately, and I get worn out. Don’t wait for me to ask — just tell me when you’ll return them.
4. Email me. I can answer email when I choose and in the middle of the night, it’s a good friend.
5. Hug me. Cancer isn’t contagious. I need the bodily contact to remind myself that.

Hey folks, I also have all the anti-puke meds I need.

Unfortunately, they make me er… constipated. Like trying to shit a basketball.

I just had my second – “never want to repeat” experience last night. I am chewing Senna tablets like Tic Tacs. I was begging the poop-god to end my life at approximately 4am this morning, while snarling at anyone who dared to rattle the bathroom door. So undignified.

Weeping, trying not to puke, trying very hard to pass a basketball and pretending to read US magazine to take my mind of my newly born hemms.

Sometimes, cancer comes down to the big questions:

To puke or to shit?

I guess I can’t suffer nobly in silence, can I?

So at this point, I have all the Oxycontin I need. Woot! Unfortunately, I have a headache that feels like a “too-moor” and a boob that feels like a Gatling Gun.

I started puking last night at about 7pm and continued on the hour until about 7ish this morning. I became inordinately attached to my Ice Cream Carton which seemed nicer to puke in than the toilet. All I did was yell “hep me hep me”. Jeebus. I knew at the time I was yelling that it was completely bizarre – but it seemed to alleviate the pain. So that’s me, turned into some sort of 1930′s farm-boy crouched around his (plastic) farm dog Jess, who happens to be shaped like a bucket…

And my brain is going all over the place. When you are in this sort of space – mortality and higher thoughts go out the window.That was last week, when I had the luxury. This week is about waking up, not throwing up, not scaring the kids, not crying, not freaking out your partner. All I have managed to do in the past week, is s.u.r.v.i.v.e.

Wow.

So I’ve been reasonably keeping it together in ‘real life’ (you, know the place where people SEE your face). I go out for drives and blubber all over the steering wheel so that when I come back, I’ve gotten it all out of my system and I can crap all over the kids for leaving their bikes in the driveway with a clear conscience that their little lives have not changed.

The cafeteria lady at the girls’ school hugged me hard, and then prayed over my head this long and mostly unintelligible prayer about “lifting me up to Jeebus”. Well Jeebus better be a Bulgarian weight-lifter cos that’s the only way I will get lifted anywhere. The whole time she was doing it (and it was a loooooong  prayer) I kept thinking I was in an episode of the Simpsons.

There is not one decent skull cap or beanie out there unless you are a surfie dude, or an old lady. I don’t want to wear a cap advertising someone’s surf wax, nor do I want to wear a tea cosy. I just want some kick-ass stuff to cover my head with — obviously too much to ask. I am thinking this is a career opportunity for my one-boobed self later on. Nobody steal this idea unless you send me a freebie first.

I swiped my ‘Cancer Card’ yesterday at the cosmetics counter. My favourite MAC lippie broke when it got stuck under the brake pedal in the car, and I thought I’d treat myself to a new one (hey, I have CANCER, right?). So the lady with the heap o’stuff on her face is going on and on and ON about which one I should have. Hard sell, Hard sell, blah blah blah.  And THEN she said (get this), “well THAT one will really go lovely with your hair”. And I said really snottily (because I was tired and who cares that much about lipstick anyway but cosmetic ladies) “well, I am going for CHEMO on Wednesday so I won’t HAVE any HAIR so it doesn’t MATTER“.  And she felt so bad, she gave me the other lipstick for free.

I know this was a bad bad bad thing to do, but I feel far less repentant than I should.  Move over on that bench in hell people, cos ya better save me some space.

Everyone is talking to me in this ‘Days of our Lives’ voice. Very.Slowly.Softly. I have not gone deaf, just malignant.