Did you know....

...that spelunking or cave exploration should not be done during periods of low white blood cell count because of the risks associated with bat guano exposure????????

ME EITHER.

Paula Paula Deen, y'all

I meant to write Paula twice, because it makes me think of this:

I'm baking some brownies for Cody's party this weekend, and I was feeling particularly ambitious, so I grabbed Paula Deen's Kitchen Classics from the bookshelf and began to peruse recipes. However, I've become distracted by her prose, which thank Butter (Paula's God), she added into her cookbook. I have now learned she met her husband because her two unruly dogs kept running into his yard, and that her two adorable sons dressed in drag and acted as bridesmaids at her wedding. ("Adorable" might give you the idea that they're like, 7 and 10 years-old, but they are fully grown men who just happen to be cute.)

But what I'd really like to share is a paragraph entitled, "The Journey Continues . . ." My comments are in bold, because they're important, duh.

"When I look back over my life, I get filled with so much emotion. (This sounds an 11th grader taking the English Regents in a sweaty gym wrote this, but we will forgive that because we love Paula.) My early childhood years were so wonderful and safe. My brother, Bubba (seriously?) and I were protected, guided, and watched over by wonderful parents. (Sudden urge to adopt two french bulldogs and name them Paula and Bubba.) You get so secure that you begin to think life is made up of only peaks and almost no valleys. I was nineteen and Bubba was twelve when our father, who was our hero, died unexpectedly at the age of 40. ( :( Paulaaaa girl.) This was the beginning of my broken spirit. (I feel like that should've been capitalized. Or that she's talking about her Native American soul in a past life. Regardless, I wanna give her a hug.) When our beautiful, sweet and loving mother died four years later at the age of 44, I felt impending doom hanging over me. I thought this valley would last for years. (I just called my mom to make sure she was okay. She's at Costco, safe and sound, you guys.)

(This is still me talking, I stopped the bold because I'm about to ramble. Go get some popcorn.) But seriously, she was 23 when this all went down, and baby Bubs was 16. And she doesn't go into much detail about it, but by this time she had also been married and birthed the two sons I spoke about. I cannot picture the 23 year-old me having three people to look after and no parents. I don't want to. I owe my life to my parents. My brain tells me that every time my heart pumps blood to it lately. (How quickly these posts turn sappy.)

To make a long, southern woman's story short, Paula opened up a restaurant, got divorced, raised her sons by herself, fell in love like a teenager and married the guy, gained mega success and is now rolling in it. ("It" meaning breadcrumbs after she gets out of her daily bath of melted butter before going to lay outside in the pool on a float made of pound cake.)

I've been trying to eat more healthily lately because it helps with the symptoms of chemo, but if you're looking for a new recipe book chock full of food that is decidedly not good for you but tastes bangin', go for the Kitchen Classics one.

(Also..Halloween costume.)

Goin to the chapel...via iphone.

Sometimes when I'm using the newest technological advances, I feel like I'm in a commercial. Like those iPad commercials where they're like, "To a mom, it's an organizer. To a 10 year-old, it's magic!" because it reads to them or teaches them how to tie their shoelaces or something.

One such magic moment happened last night when I "face-timed" with all my buddies in the hotel after Angela's wedding. I'm kind of happy Andrew lost his original phone, because now that he has the iPhone, he teaches me all the cool stuff you can do with it. Hence the 1 am face-time, which is essentially video chatting.

Throughout the day, I had been seeing random photos from the wedding uploaded onto Facebook and with each one, experiencing little pangs of sadness because I couldn't be there. But everyone looked so GOOD and happy that it was hard to be actually sad. I mean, look at Angela's bangin footwear:

After a few failed attempts at face time (where I just saw my own face looking back at me like a shiny potato or McDonald's chicken nugget) we finally connected. Andrew took me around the room to say hi to everyone, which sounded basically like: "KTTTTTTTT!!!"

"YOU GUYSSSS" I said. Then midway through a laugh Andrew goes "WAIT, WAIT" and turns the phone around, and I'm looking at Angela in her wedding dress in the doorway, looking beautiful and glowingly happy.

We just kind of stared at each other for 3 seconds before we both had a hand up to our mouths, crying. It was just really unexpected for both of us, I think. (And not to taint the purity of the moment, but see what I was saying about Apple commercials? Can you really tell me that wouldn't make an amazing, albeit pandering one?)

There's been this wavering ambivalence that I've been experiencing in regards to times like this--where I see my friends doing things I'd love to be part of, longing to be there, but also just really excited for them. I think the excitement factor is even higher than before, because this whole thing has really begun to seem manageable and truly what Mrs. Rapp calls "just a bump in the road." The recovery from my third treatment--I'm almost wary to say--was not nearly as bad as the first two. I think a lot of that has to be chalked up to drinking a ton of water and eating more fruits and veggies, (shocking!) but also to the fact that I'm done with 3/8 treatments. After the next one, I'll be half done. How....did that happen?

Actually, wait, don't tell me, I'd rather not know.

So it just started pouring,

and same-sex marriage in NY just passed. Beautiful.

There are several things I'd like to recommend to you:

1: Don't try to blog on an iPad. Don't get me wrong, they're awesome, but it took me about four minutes to type the title to this entry, which was enough to force me off the couch and ALL THE WAY up the stairs to get my laptop.

2: The Kathy Griffin comedy special "Gurrl Down." If I was really adamant about selling it, I'd look up some star youtube moments and post them here, but no one's paying me to promote her, so, you'd be better off finding it on Bravo sometime. It is really funny.

3. This banana bread recipe, which was handed down over generations to me. (Read: my roomie Sara got it from a prior roomie, Angela, who maybe actually was bequeathed it from her grandma or someone. Btdubbs: Angela is getting married this weekend in Westchester, and though I can't be there--HAPPY WEDDING, ANG! My next slice of banana bread will be dedicated to you and Kevin.)

But really, Cody may be the chef of the kids, but baby girl is the baker, ok? I made the most kickass Paula Deen pound cake a few days ago that I planned on freezing for Cody's party, but the perfectionist who birthed me (love you, mom) decided because a tiny bit of the top came off in the bundt pan, it had to be redone. Whatever. I got to eat it the other day.

Baller Banana Bread:

What you need:

-1/3 cup softened butter

-1 cup sugar

-1 egg

-4 ripe bananas

-1 teaspoon vanilla

-1 teaspoon baking soda

-pinch of salt

-1 1/2 cups flour

-hefty amounts of walnuts and chocolate chips (most necessary ingredients)

What you do with that stuff:

-Cream together the butter, sugar, egg and vanilla.

-Squish the bananas in and cream those suckers, too.

-Fold in the baking soda, salt, and flour

-Dump in the copious amounts of choco chips and walnuts

Grease the life out of a pan, preferably a cute bundt bread one. Oh, crap. You should have preheated the oven to 350 degrees. Sorry if that sets you back a half an hour, but let's face it-no one is reading this and cooking along at the same time. PLUS, you're baking banana bread, what else do you have going on really?

TASTY TIPS FROM SARA: If you're baking in a bundt pan where the bottom will turn out to be the top, dump some sugar and cinnamon in first so the topping will have a nice crisp to it. If you're just baking in a normal pan, just put it on top (duh). Also, this is really special--serve it with sea salt, deeeeeeeelicious.

Cook it for around 45 minutes. You can stick a toothpick into the center of it, which will probably hit a banana or chip and come out gooey, so just take it out when your fabulous baker's intuition (or your nose) tells you it's done. Then eat it.

4) Britney Spears' (speerziz) new video for "I Wanna Go," in which she proves herself a stoner ("Half Baked" reference at the beginning, y'all) and also a sex offender--she flashes, like, a 10 year old boy. But damn if this song isn't catchy.

5) To reclaim my street cred, here's a cover of Arcade Fire's "The Suburbs" by Mr. Little Jeans that Cody played for me the other day. It should be the perfect thing to relax to after all that banana bread you ate.

Lobster Meditation

In an astonishing new development, I am writing the day OF chemo as opposed to the morning after, because I have a sneaking suspicion that tomorrow I might feel like poot. Why? Because I kind of feel like poot right now. Wee bit naus at the moment. (When I say "wee bit" I really mean I've had a seltzer can to my lips since about five this evening, and when my mom and brother were making baked clams I had to barricade the door to the room I was napping in and sleep with a stuffed animal over my nose, even though I was a full staircase away in the opposite corner of the house.)

BUT I'm not writing to tell you about my tummy troubles. I am writing to detail my new detox procedure for the days following chemo.

My first treatment was memorial day weekend, right, which turned out to be the first really glorious weekend of the summer. So everyone's outside, getting sunburnt because they forget about the fact that you need a base tan, people, you just do, which you achieve with sunblock. But I spent that weekend in my bed, waking up only long enough to occasionally stumble into the bathroom and knock my hipbone on the sink and blind myself with the fluorescent lighting in my journey to pee. But because it was so nice out, I decided to open the window next to my bed and look out at the sun (and curse my young neighbors for...laughing and I guess being innocent children, basically). Next thing I know, I wake up DRENCHED in sweat. But the cold sweat that I actually used to experience as a symptom of the Hodge before I began treatment. And, ok, I try not to go into the overly gross details on here--because I am aware there is a fine line between "haha" and "haaaa...ehh...ew."--but the sweat smelled like the chemo drugs that got pumped into my system the day before. And take it from me, it's supes dupes unpleasant.

So when the second treatment began creeping up on me, I visited--where else!--the interwebz, and found out that soaking in Epsom salts in a hot bath for 20 minutes can help to draw out the toxins. And guess what, it DOES, and I'd like to share with you the specific way that I get down:

Lobster Meditation, y'all:

Step One: Walk in the dark through your parents' bedroom to get to their jacuzzi*1 with your laptop. Make sure you don't hit into the closet door, which is more often than not left ajar. Almost drop the laptop when your dad talks in his sleep unexpectedly.

Step Two: Put the laptop down somewhere that is NOT NEAR THE TUB. Turn the hot water knob on all the way. Feel it after five minutes. Burn your fingers. Turn the cold tap on a teeny bit.

Step Three: Wait for the tub to fill. Open iTunes and decide on some soothing tunes to play. Decide Joanna Newsom is soooo last spring, and remember you have the new Bon Iver album to get into.

Step Four: Have a seat on the toilet. Is the water even rising?

Step Five: Check the water temp to make sure it is as close to burning your skin off as possible, but also that it doesn't actually burn your skin off.

Step Six: Add a ton of Epsom Salt*2. Like four cups. Pretend a palmful is a cup.

Step Seven: (This is the tough part, because for an activity that is essentially staying still, it requires quite a bit of stamina.) Ease yourself into the water slowly. Realize it may be just a bit too hot. Tell yourself the hot water feels "soothing." Lower yourself down until you have covered as much of your body as you can in the water, and...stay there. (Eventually the water actually should feel soothing. If not, stop listening to me and ADD SOME COLD. I won't be held responsible for any burns.) Your face will begin to heat up, and beads of sweat should soon be comin' around the mountain. Evoke the spirit of the lobster just before it boils to death.

Step Seven: After you've vowed never to eat lobster, like, ever, it's time to meditate. Think back to sophomore year of high school, when you took a gym class called "movement and exploration," and your teacher made you do lay-down meditation on the wrestling mats in the basement. Take nice, big, deep breaths, in and out. Be thankful you do not smell the mats. You should be perspiring quite nicely now. With each breath out, imagine the chemo drugs seeping through your skin and out of your body, where they like to sit and plan how to make you feel sad. Realize your mind has wandered to last night's episode of So You Think You Can Dance and that you were wishing you knew how to work the DVR better. Go back to concentrating on the breathing.

So you essentially do that for as long as you can humanely stand the heat and humidity, or you feel you've made some progress (even if it's only mental) in detoxifying your system. Make sure you moisturize like you're paid to do it when you get out, but first I like to take a nice gritty face scrub and really work it in, since your pores are so open you can basically see your brain. Your face will feel like a baby's bottom, specifically this baby's:

Just kidding, it's more like this baby's:

You really will feel as good as that baby looks, on my honor as a blogger.

Uhm, I guess these are footnotes:

*1 If you have a standard size tub, don't fret. This can still be accomplished by bringing a 711 big gulp with you into the bath and pouring it over the parts of your body that can't be completely submerged like when you were five and no one made a more perfect mermaid than you did.

*2 That is, if your brother didn't use the last of it as a soak to ease his pain after his appendix was removed, that SELFISH JERK.

I just texted Jenna to read about Lobster Mediation tomorrow:

Me: I'm writing now about my special new detox move. lobster mediation

J: Red Lobster meditation? Jaykay

M: You just made me vurp.

J: I made you burp?

M: No, vurp. As in vomit in one's mouth. i'm naus and the words Red Lobster is like syrup of ipecac right now.

J: Ooooooof. One thousand pardons.

I'll give you like, 850.

This entry is brought to you by the letter "B"

B is for:

Brooklyn. This morning I woke up in Jenna and Hope's sweet new pad down the road from my sweet old pad. I woke up to an alarm which is an unpleasant change from waking up to my dog, but it was the first time in about three months I've even used the alarm on my phone, so.

Neither Hope nor Jenna was home, since they're gallantly riding down the road to I'm A Real Person, USA. (They both have new jobs.) So I made myself at home with a cup of coffee and a playlist on Hope's iTunes labeled "sssssssssssummer!" and got to work pretending I still lived in Brooklyn and just had the day off in the middle of the week like I used to. I feel so alive when I'm there. Not saying I don't have it pretty good at my parents'. (Pool? Check. Refrigerator consistently stocked with fresh cold cuts? Check. Gigantic bathtub? CHA-ECK.) I had the fleeting thought of packing it up and moving to the West coast when I'm done with all this bizz, but truth is, I'm far too attached to my family and friends (who with the exception of a few people who have yet to make the move--I'm looking at you, Jason Linguanti and Thea Carlson--have all settled in BK or Manhattan.) But last night, sitting on the sidewalk, eating fresh guac and people watching in Park Slope...I was just overcome with this rare sense of absolute contentment. Brooklyn's where I want to be, and Brooklyn is where I will go.

Bald: Just when I was starting to become fond of my GI Jane look, the teeny hairs started falling out, too. One day I was absentmindedly playing with the hair on the right side of my head only to find out that I had rubbed a nice little COMPLETELY bald spot in. So obviously my mind goes right to what shapes I can etch into my head before I go completely Mr. Clean. I suggested a heart to my mom and she kind of threw up her hands and told me to "STOP BEING SO WEIRD." (This was after she said she would "get out of my hair," to which I gleefully replied "But I don't HAVE any!"

Anyway, I have since become obsessed with my wig. It's blonde and all Jennifer Aniston-y. The first few trips out felt like I was in disguise. I used to play around with wigs in college occasionally, but wearing one and knowing you have hair underneath is different. But really, I kind of think blondes DO have more fun.

Badass: I ran into a friend at Marshall's yesterday that I hadn't seen in quite a while. She and I were co-captains of the volleyball team senior year, and though she is hands down one of the sweetest girls in the world and we were pretty close during HS, we haven't spoken in a while.

I was so happy to see her, and even happier when she asked if I had just gotten my hair done since I was wearing the wig.

"Nope, it's my wig!" I said, smiling. She looked confused. "I lost my hair," I said, to which she looked even more confused. I had just assumed she knew--St. James isn't that big of a town, plus Cody had told me he'd hung out with her little sister a few times recently. But she was really shocked when I told her I was going through chemo, and, like I said, as she is the sweetest girl, was really sympathetic.

This morning I woke up to an email from her. Since I've been writing this blog, I've gotten a lot of facebook messages and cards from friends who want to show their support, and I can't say how good each message makes me feel. But this email my friend wrote me truly takes the cake. She had been diagnosed with Crohn's disease, a disease that causes inflammation of the intestines and an array of other really awful-sounding gastro-intestinal symptoms. She lost tons of weight and had to undergo life-saving surgery, plus go through a lot more that I don't want to detail to protect her privacy. She told me how her parents stayed with her in the hospital every minute and how she got by on making jokes with her friends about her condition.

"Who would have thought when we were shaking our tail-feathers (a dance we used to do during practice) and toilet papering Coach Alamia’s car that all of this would happen?" she wrote, and I had a flashback to us at 18, going up to do the coin toss together to see which team would serve first, and a little pang of sad nostalgia hit me. But what REALLY got me was this:

"Sometimes I wish I could go back to a time before I was diagnosed with my Crohn’s, but now I realize that I have it for a reason; to help others who are going through it too. I’m starting my Masters at Stony Brook in the fall for Medical Humanities and Compassionate Care. It’s basically looking at illness and disease through the eyes of the patient."

If that's not the perfect example of an amazing person, I don't know what is. I feel so inspired by her story that it makes the Hodge seem completely doable. I mean, compared to what she went through, my situation seems like a walk in the park (on a cloudy day).

Her email also got the old cog's turning on this thought I've been toying with--going back to school. I wish I could say it was to become a nurse or something medical-related, but let's face it, guys--baby girl is SQUEAMISH. And honestly, I can't see myself doing anything other than something writing-related with myself for the rest of my life. The ballsy Kt is like, YEAH get your MFA in creative non-fiction writing, then write a book! But the big baby is like, go for your english teacher's certification because it's more likely to transfer into a job. Basically, what I'm committing to here is at the very least, doing some legitimate research on the matter and setting my eyes on something further than just getting better and getting back into the city.

Beach: I just like the beach. It's great.

Baby GaGa: This last one's kind of a cop out on the B theme, but I downloaded Lady GaGa's new album, and I've gotta say I'm impressed. Over the past year she's succeeded at making me sneer every time I saw her by being completely contrived in every manner, but she just might be making a turn around in my approval zone, which I THINK we can all agree, is really exclusive and important. (No it's not.) But it's funny, because her album is half pandering to 14 year olds (One lyric on a song called "Hair" is "Whenever I'm dressed cool my parents put up a fight." No, I'm not kidding.) and the other half is talking about like, getting wasted in a leather bar on the lower East side. My overall statement on the album, though, is that it makes me feel like I'm wearing a face full of makeup.

OH MY GOD I FORGOT TO WRITE ABOUT CODY. I am The Worst. Cody comes with me to my doctor appointments, and I forget to write about how he HAD HIS APPENDIX OUT on father's day. Seriously, he did. I picked him up from a grad party at 1 am ish Saturday night and he was fine, and four hours later, he's in the emergency room. What is that! But he got it taken out laparoscopically, which is fancy terms for "sucked out through your belly button," and was home the same night. He's recovering nicely, which is good news because we're having a big (er than my mom is expecting it to be) grad party for him on July 2nd, and he starts work (WAH!!!) July 13th in Midtown. I can't say how much I am going to miss him being around every day. If i had the funds I would pay him to put "My sister's companion" on his resume.

My mom was with him at the hospital during and after the surgery, then switched shifts with my dad. We had gotten four Mets tickets for that day, and Cody still wanted my dad to be able to get to the game, so I went with him and Mrs. Rapp. It was awesome. My dad loved it. I drank a beer. But anyway, my mom got home and sank down onto the couch with the kind of exhaustion that being in a hospital brings, so I went outside to call my friend Andrew and catch up on his weekend. He was mid an "I lost my phone in a bar" story when I screeched I had to call him back because a tiny, fat, feathery baby robin hopped out of a bush and was weebling around INCHES away from the side of my pool. "I HAVE TO CALL YOU BACK I NEED TO SAVE A BABY BIRD." I yelled, and as I pulled the phone away from my ear, I heard him saying, "This is the second time this month!" (I had also been on the phone with him when I noticed a tiny chipmunk clinging for life onto the side of the pool about two weeks ago.)

So in these situations with baby animals I just get kind of... useless and frantic, so I ran to the living room window and started waving my hands around in the air to get my mom's attention.

She ran outside.

"What? WHAT!" she yelled.

"There's a baby bird and he's gonna fall in the pool!" She ran to get the skimmer. "No!" I yelled. "If we touch it the mom will abandon it!" And that's when my mom lost it. I think the strain of the past few months and the fact that she had just come from the hospital with another kid with another medical condition got to her, understandably.

"That's it! I cannot deal with a freaking baby bird that's not even DROWNING. DEAL WITH IT." she said and went inside.

So I sat down and watched it to make sure it didn't go anywhere. And it didn't. For a while. Finally its mom came out and chirped and pecked it into the bushes, where I have to assume it is completely safe and nothing bad can happen to it, ever.

Third treatment tomorrow. I am determined to make this one go quick cause I gots some fourth of Julying on Fire Island and other fun things to do.

Creature Feature

So last night I was hanging out with some pals at my friend Ari's house (which is essentially the closest thing to The Burrow one will find in Smithtown, and please know that that is a very high compliment. And also that I have been reading/watching an insane amount of Harry Potter.) And Ari's brother was kind of doing a crossword puzzle when he announced the clue "Donkey's counterpart." So I'm like, "Duhhhh Shrek" and he says nope, it's eight letters. "Can't be tail then huh," I say. We get as far as "Shrek Tail" and give up to watch DANCE! which is how everyone at Ari's refers to So You Think You Can Dance. Then we watched The Half Blood Prince and Andrew dropped me off at 2 am which is, for me, crraaazy late to be out, and I passed out until 10: 41 when my brain woke me up......with the answer to the crossword, completely unsolicited by my consciousness.

Elephant! Like the Democrat/Republican symbols. Now, the only evidence of this being the answer so far is that it is eight letters long since I don't have the actual crossword to fit it into, but I have to say I am pretty impressed with myself. I wasn't even AWAKE, people. In fact, I was dreaming about making a whirlpool at a resort somewhere with a really weird group of people. I clearly have genius I am just not tapping into. I need to get a yoga video. Or the Rosetta Stone for Mandarin Chinese. Or something.

My real point is, I can tell today is going to be a good day. My mouth has finally stopped hurting. Wait...have I even written about that? In case, I haven't said so, the worst part of chemotherapy is the mouth pain that comes along with it. Chemo attacks fast-growing cells: cancer cells, but also hair cells (which we shall get to in a minute. Oh, how we will get to it.) and skin cells and the cells in your mouth. It's common to get actual mouth sores (yyyyick), but I haven't experienced that. (Knock on wood.) What happens is that it essentially feels like little barrels of TNT are going off against the insides of my cheeks and teeny people are jackhammering into my teeth and then having a bbq lunch break on my tongue. It makes food taste weird for the first half of eating it and sometimes the pain goes into my jaw and up into my ears. The only thing that helps is brushing my teeth with warm water and swishing a mixture of 1 tsp baking soda + 1 tsp salt + one quart of water in a bottle. (Trying to be specific in case anyone wants to use this as a reference one day.)

But like I said, the mouth pain is gone, finally. I think in general, though, I am going to be achey until I stop getting the shots. And as taking painkillers constantly isn't any kind of a solution, I am going to look into the department of complimentary medicine at Stonybrook Hospital to see about massage or acupuncture (although I find the thought of volunteering to be

stuck with so many needles laughable). My Aunt Connie, who's a midwife, has been telling me to do so from the beginning, so I think it's time.

Speaking of timing, it was finally time to shave my head. Correction--it was finally time for CODY to shave my head. Saturday was my parents' 35 anniversary, and when I got in the shower before dinner, I was just pulling out clumps of hair and crying. I feel like I've been pretty blase about losing my hair on here so far, but the truth is that it SUUUUUUCKS. My hair has always been such a huge part of my physical identity and a modem of my self expression. It's been long, short, blonde, blue, purple, black. I prided myself on it. And then one day it's swirling down a shower drain.

That being said, it's a fine line between acknowledging the bad versus harping on the negative. I find that the former is necessary for self awareness and preservation, while the former will lead you into a self-pitying spiral that's no good for anyone. So I will end the wah-fest here.

On Sunday I decided it was time to shave my head, but I didn't know how to use the clippers. Enter, once again, my amazing little broseph. We all (me, Cody, my mom and my pup Lily) went up to my mom's bathroom and I sat on a bench while Cody did it. Lily, with a very alarmed look in her eyes, kept looking from my head to the floor as fluffs of hair fell on it. Then she retrea

ted to watch from the door before disappearing altogether. I think she was reminded of being at the groomer and hightailed it out of there before we got to her.

"How does my head look?" I asked, halfway through. Cody paused for a minute before saying, "...Really small." And it's true. My head is tiny. It's like the size of a cantaloupe. I keep weirding myself out when I walk past mirrors because I feel like a new version of my head was just plopped onto my body. But I'm really happy I did it. I just feel relieved, like a big test was over or something. My hair is still falling out, but it's way less demoralizing in 2 centimeter pieces.

So, basically, combine this:

with this:

and a dash of this:

and you get this:

Hahah oh, jeez. I don't think I've ever done a more accurate mathematical equation. Whew.

My room is a dddiiiiiisssssaster zone of clothes and cans of seltzer. My wig is lying on my dresser like a dead animal. I have never been allowed to get away with this kind of mess in my room before, and I don't think my parents' lenience is good for me. So I am going to go clean before anything else happens today. Adieu!

Things I've done since my first chemo treatment

-Not updated my blog

-Had my second chemo treatment

The first one was on Memorial Day weekend, which I passed tangled up in the sheets of my bed, absolutely unable to move. I felt great the day after (when I wrote my last blog), which I took as a sign that hey, maybe I'll breeze right through this chemo bizz. But really, it takes a few days to hit. By Sunday morning I was a zombie. Monday I tried to go to target with my bff Jenna to get stuff for her new apartment, and we had only gotten a brita filter before I got the sweaty, dizzy feeling that means passing out is moments away. So we left and guess what I did after that? I slept some more! It basically took me almost a week to feel like my normal self again.

But what's been really amazing is that I haven't been nauseous like I always thought chemo made people. Maybe it's because my dose is lower than some, or because, like my doctor said, the anti-nausea medicine they have now is really effective. I don't know, but I'm really thankful for it.

Oh, also. The shots that I have to get for my white blood count? Annoying on all counts. For one, the wait time to actually get into the doctor's office is usually about 1-2 hours. The only reason I'm okay with that is because I know my doc is spending as much time as he needs to with each patient in order to treat them to the best of his ability. But my sentiments are not exactly...shared by the majority of the people waiting, most (actually, ALL) of whom are older than me and I guess more prone to crabbiness. One guy, who was there with his wife, was the biggest whiner in the world. For a second I thought, oh, he's pissed off on his wife's account, cause she looked pretty darn uncomfortable. But he was just bitching about how HE had to wait and spend the day in a doctor's office and how "patience isn't one of my virtues, no sir." Heard that 80 times from him.

So there's the wait time. But more importantly, it's a bad thing to have such low white blood cell counts, which my tests have been turning up. For one, it makes you really susceptible to disease, since white blood cells are what fight off infection, which means you can't get your nails done, eat any fruit without a skin that can be peeled off, or touch any public garbage receptacles (that last one is mom-instated.) I've been joking that I've had to severely change my ways. I was never a dirty person, but I wasn't the most careful with germs. I'd try on sample after sample at Sephora, eat food that rolled off the plate onto the table, lean my forehead on a subway pole, stuff like that. (That sounds pretty gross when you write it out, but I like to think I was building up natural antibodies.) Now I'm packing about five of those little Bath and Body Works antibacterials in my bag.

But the worst part is that the shots cause extreme achiness anywhere your body makes marrow. I've had about 4 so far, two of which were back-to-back, and it was not pretty. I arranged it so that I could spend a night in Brooklyn at Jenna and Hope's new apartment, and after some amazing outdoor dining and coffee ice cream, I was experiencing this weird kind of pain I'd never felt before in my back. Every time I sat down or stood up, about 4 seconds would pass then I'd get a radiating, pulsing pain that would make me jump a little. When I told my doctor, he said he was hesitating on whether to give it to me anymore, but the drug seems to be really working on my white blood cell count, so stopping it isn't really an option. I just wish my insurance company would let me have it all in one go, so I wouldn't be at the doctor's four times a week. But whatareyagonnado?

My second treatment was a lot less scary than the first. I got that lidocaine stuff to put on the injection site, which really lowers the prick pain. Also, Cody (little bro) came with me, and he kept me calm and in good spirits. At first I was worried the process might upset him, but he was, I think, a little fascinated by the whole thing. Having him home since he graduated has been so good for the whole family. For one, it's always fun to have another sibling around to bounce parental attentions off of (good or bad--not that I've had much bad lately, I've been incredibly babied actually.) Secondly, he's turning into a five-star chef. Seriously, he's like the rat in Ratatouille. It's awesome. He's been apartment hunting in New York City, and I can't help but wish he'd stay the whole summer, even though I'm excited for him.

And that goes for all of my friends actually. The day Jenna and Hope moved in together, I had myself a good pity party and wrote a frenzied, penned journal entry that would've fit right in with anything I wrote from high school. See, here's how it was supposed to work: Jenna would turn her internship into a job, Hope would graduate as a speech pathologist, they'd move down the street from Me, Sara and Andrew's apartment, we'd cook together, have cutesy movie and wine nights, galavant around Brooklyn the entire summer in shorts and tank tops, soaking up some nice gin and tonics. The only part that didn't go according to plan was The Hodge, which I will admit it, made (and continues to make) me extremely jealous of all my friends whose lives seem to be taking off and going places. I don't want to necessarily call this whole thing a setback, because I'm gaining a whole new set of handling-bad-stuff skills and it's taught me to appreciate the silver linings, but at certain times it can feel like one. Other time it feels like an extended vacation from real life. So how much of a babybrat would I be if I couldn't be happy for other people? Plus, I'll be joining them soon enough. I miss Brooklyn too much to not live there, AND I found out my last treatment is going to be on September 24! That's at least a month shorter than I was expecting. I think I have radiation treatments after that, but maybe by then I'll be able to snag myself some kind of job and make it work. I'm not planning too concretely, but it's really uplifting to know the end date of the worst part. It's basically just the summer, which hasn't been bad. I love being around my family this much, and warm weather is just delicious.

Oh also, I am starting to lose my hair, which is a shame because once I actually put effort into styling it, I began to like my short 'do. Also, bald was never one of the looks I'd have willingly tried out. I'm really trying hard not to be superficial, though, because, really, Health > Hair. And when it grows back in, I'll be able to see my natural color, which I don't think I've seen since 8th grade. I did go a little harder than usual on my legs with my towel after my bath last night to see if my leg hair would come off (hello no shaving for the rest of the summer!) but of course that didn't work. Typical.

I am preparing to hibernate for the next couple days, but I'd like to leave you all with this drawing that hangs in the infusion room at my doctor's. Cody and I both thought it was so funny and cute. It was done by a little kid for his grandma.

*ok turns out that photo comes up really small, so here's some more description--it's a dragon labeled "Cancer" who is attacking who I'm assuming to be the grandma in her castle. But trusty "Chemo man" (who "always wins") is riding up to save the day. The end.