An Easy Guide to Surviving Chemo
Just Kidding-It’s Hell
I’m thinking I should take a hint from Hebrew scripture. Please bear in mind I am no scholar, so just roll with it, eh?
In the book of Exodus, it talks about the high priest going into the Holy of Holies wearing his robe, bedecked with bells and pomegranates around the hem. This was a place where the priest, and ONLY the officiant, could enter. His foot is tethered to a chain which leads to outside the holy tent. This was in case he pissed off the Almighty and ended up face down, no bubbles and needed a means to drag his corpse outside.
I’m thinking this might be an excellent strategy for trips to the loo when going through chemo.
Squeamish readers, just stop right here. Go fetch yourself a nice cup of tea and think of butterflies and wildflower fields. Maybe spritz a little rose water on yourself while you’re at it.
Chemo is ugly. It is a controlled poison dump into your body to eradicate floating cancer cells. And yeah, yeah, I know. It’s medicine.
Faaaaack. Most medicines don’t make your hair fall out, create mouth sores, make swallowing difficult, eyeball your nails to see if they are going to turn black, make your eyes twitch, turn your tongue into a hairy landscape reminiscent of topographical maps before the day of Google, and suffer from couch lock beyond the pale of any stoner trip.
For me, the worst indignity takes place in the hinterlands.
I have had food poisoning. Suffered from irritable bowel syndrome for months at a time. High velocity ca-ca? Check. Then there was the time I mixed a big salad with Venti Starbucks during the height of IBS and shat myself before fleeing the scene of the crime in shame.
Yup. Child’s play.
None of this prepares you for the nastiness of chemo and the gifts it brings to your bowels.
Mustard gas holds nothing over the horrors that take place when your body is purging the aftermath of drugs that require you flush the toilet not once, but twice, after evacuating your bowels. My god. We’re talking this, er, crap (literally) is toxic to porcelain and plumbing.
Think about that for a moment. And if you’re in the midst of the trots, you may just have a moment-a very brief moment-to ponder this unpleasant truth.
Which brings me my idea. Bells and pomegranates and a chain.
The bell, or the lack of it’s tinkle, is the early warning signal in case I gas myself to death. The canary in the coal mine, if you will. No chirp or chime? She’s dead, Jim.
My partner, Tom, can drag my chemo-saturated dead ass out by the chain. (After a three-day mandatory wait for high velocity fans from the fire department to clear the air.)
Pomegranates? We’re talking air fresheners, me thinks. After all, this was before the days of Glade Plug-Ins, Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day or Poo Pourri (Gads, that annoying woman in the light blue dress.)
Even still, the most valiant of efforts from manufacturers to rid the water-closet of offensive odors, chemo crap and its malodorous toxins remains the uncontested winner.
(Hey, I warned you. You could be sipping tea and picturing butterflies right now, but yet here you are reading this.)
I’d join you in the land of imagining butterflies and flowers right now, but gotta run…
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