If you read my last blog, written during a weekend while I was tired and sick from chemo and showing no improvement, and then saw me later in the week and over the weekend, I would seem like a different person. I even felt guilty, as if I was in one of those old sitcoms where the person wears a neck brace in court after a traffic accident and then is caught in a lie when they’re carefree and frolicking later.
Through Wednesday I hadn’t been feeling very well, but something shifted that day. The unwell feeling was different, as if my digestive system was actually trying to do something for a change. On Thursday, I suddenly felt better than I had in months. In fact, I didn’t just feel a clearing of the chemo’s side effects of nausea, fatigue and pain, but my diarrhea subsided a little bit. Though yesterday I stopped improving and felt a physical setback, but I hope it’s temporary.
Last Monday and Tuesday, I was avoiding small talk with people, and this weekend I was back to waving to neighbors and talking to community garden members. I had friends in town this weekend, and we went to the David Bowie exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, met up with more friends to celebrate Record Store Day, then headed to the renowned pizza place in my neighborhood for a late dinner after putting our names in for a five-hour wait. (There’s always been a wait for this pizza, but it’s gotten progressively more ridiculous until its appearance on a TV show recently made the pizza so sought after that you have to get there before they open at 5:45 to put your name on the list to even hope of getting in.) The next day, we went to my new favorite pizza place in my neighborhood for the Grandma Pie, and we stopped in my community garden. We also ended our Bowie extravaganza with a stop at the Broadway-Lafayette subway stop, all decked out in Bowie. I was out and about in the world, and it was nice.
I got ice cream and then my guts, which had been feeling questionable, started roiling on the way home. At the very least, I have hope that it will subside and that I might improve after chemo next week. Living without hope has been difficult, so the glimmer of wellness has done so much for my mood. I’m trying not to get discouraged today. I’m also so cautious about being optimistic.
In other good news, the GoFundMe friends set up reached its goal, and I’l be able to pay the $1,000+ for the month of COBRA interim health insurance and continue to pay for some medications that insurance doesn’t cover.
I wore my Howard Jones “Things Can Only Get Better” shirt yesterday because of a Friday night discussion about him and because in my wardrobe of concert tees and black, it’s one of the most cheerful items of clothing I have. Hopefully, things are looking up.
