Dates, Complaints, Pulling It Together

I have all these days swimming around in my head. August 21...diagnosis. September 5...surgery. October 17...started first batch of chemo. December 19...started second batch of chemo. December 18...last day of work. November 27...Olivia's birthday. January 14...Alyssa's birthday.

February 3...Amy died. She died. She died. She died.

She died and yet I still have all these petty little complaints rolling around my thoughts.

My hands have a rash on them. It's ugly and itchy and while at play musical practice last week, I was working with some of the moms on the costume committee. One mom in particular and I were working on the horse that Farquad uses to meet Princes Fiona. We were taping a piece of fabric to this inflatable horse, trying to make it look like a saddle. I noticed how smooth and young her hands looked. She and I are the same age. My hands are gross. But I'm alive, so why am I thinking about how ugly my hands are?

I feel like it is so much work to try and sleep in my bed these days. The best sleep I get is sleeping in the recliner from about 8am to noon on Wednesday mornings after my Tuesday night insomnia. My bed makes me congested, it makes my hips hurt. I have to pee every two hours and I have to roll my gross fat body out of bed, lumber to the bathroom, pee, get a drink of water to try and alleviate the dry mouth I have because I'm so congested that I've become a mouth breather. I blow my nose and get these gross globs of bloody snot. It's disgusting. Then I go back to be and do it all over again. Yes, I'm sleeping with a humidifier next to me. Yes, I've tried Benadryl to help with both the hand rash and the congestion. It just dries me out that much more. I have five pillows in my bed to try and help with the aches and pains. They don't actually help much at all.

I'm back to sleeping in a bra because for the couple of weeks that I tried to sleep without one, my incision started to hurt. My boobs were pulling at it in a way that was painful. I'm a delight and lovely to be around.

Hats...I'm so sick of wearing hats. I'm lucky that it's winter and so no one thinks anything of my hats but my stupid head gets to hot after a few hours in a hat and when I'm in public, I'm not actually that comfortable taking off my hat, even though my hair is growing back. It's only about a quarter of an inch long, though, so not nearly long enough to go without the hat.

But can I say that when I see people wearing stocking caps as a fashion statement, I feel a rage well up in me that makes me want to go and snatch the hat off their stupid hairy heads, fill the hat with butter and beat them with it. Obviously, I don't do this but I want to because they have NO IDEA what it means to HAVE to wear a stupid had day in and day out and it just kind of in infuriates me.

I realize this is not rational. I know. I don't actually care, though, since I know I won't ever actually assault anyone with a butter beanie.

Steroids are evil. I know I need them to help keep the worst of the allergic reactions at bay. But the munchies, the insomnia, the irritation (see the above mention of wanting to use a butter beanie on fashion hat wearers.) They're tough to deal with. I've gained about six pounds in the past ten weeks. I have no energy to do anything about these eight pounds. I just want to eat waffles at 3am after taking a hot bath. Yeah, real conducive to losing weight.

I'm so tired.

I only have two more chemo sessions. Tom and I are meeting the radiologist tomorrow morning at 8. I'll know more about that after the appointment, obviously. I want to be well. I want to go back to work (sort of...) I want to take care of my husband and kids.

I know I'll get to. As long as I'm still here, I have a fighting chance. I know this. And knowing that Amy doesn't, well, it makes me feel like such a whiny brat. I will pull it all together now that I've given myself a moment to feel a little sorry for myself and get all my complaints out of my head.

I'll be okay. Hey, on the bright side, I've managed to avoid the dreaded diarrhea...I can always fall back on that.