10 days in which I died and got up again

So I've survived the internal torching and come out the other side to tell the story. Actually, feel quite cocky at the moment. Could live to regret that. Arrived home minus handbag and all fired up at child, at life, at God knows what. A tad too much sausage roll sans tomato sauce. Vinegar makes the roof of my mouth jump and tastes totally metallic. Yuck ... Energy misfiring. Eaten more today than I did in the entire of last week. The supermarket was sooo inviting! Three days to go to Christmas!!!

It has been 10 days of food issues. Major and None. Since last I wrote light years have passed. Yes, I've been into the blackened pit and lain, spread-eagled unable to move from side to side or lift my cranium. Sleep was respite. I lay 20 hours a day. From Friday evening, post Christmas party unplanned fade-out at 7pm, I wallowed from bed, to bucket, to toilet, to shower and back. Modus operandi, the flop! Crawled back, clutching my big yellow bucket as a spittoon. Never leaving my side. Dreadful oozing black substances dripping, causing consternation. Is it bile? What is that stuff? Rank stench. More tests for possible infection, menopause... Don't talk to me about constipation please! Loving husband administering pills for pain, nausea, hiccoughing, reflux, heartburn and mood stabilisation. Round and round and round the carousel careened.  He proffered powerful sustaining potions of powered protein drinks.

 "Line the stomach walls. Keep the pills down. Aah!!"

Thank God Sid wrote out a script for some decent hard-working anti-nausea drugs that kicked in yesterday, after I was told to double the dose. So pleased was I for managing to scoff three tiny chocolate bars on the way to radio therapy yesterday. In my usual over-exuberance I think two would have sufficed. Yet, it was a far cry from tiny slurps of vanilla custard, ice-coffee making me gag, ham that tastes of old socks,  or even the questionable two fruit. The juice machine has also lain idle with a kilo of blackened carrots going to compost. I plan to rectify that situation tomorrow. Hopefully the pears will comply.

Post Chemo, 10 days ago, I enjoyed a short-lived honeymoon. I remember thinking when the lunchtime sandwiches had come around the day before how few recliner chair recipients were tucking into the free meal. By Wednesday, after my first round of anti-nausea pills had ceased I joined the rank and file of the ne'do-eats. Thursday, with no more steroids on board I was all at sea. And it was rough.

My sessions under the white mesh Darth Vader contraption have been bearable and infinitely better if I can muster a relaxed starting position. Deep abdominal breathing, the Serenity Prayer and some decent songs later and the operators are wrenching it off again.

"Another One Bites the Dust" 10 down and 25 to go! Hooray!! So far I've noticed a roughness in the skin on my cheekbones. One glorious white-head on the side of my neck, which Michael had to pop this morning and wickedly applied some drying eucalyptus oil, has now developed in a spotty outcrop loving placed over my larynx.

Fantastic news today. Only one or maybe 2 more sessions of chemo to go  and three weeks apart not fortnightly after all. So my next doomsday is set for January 3 and there may just be no follow up required after that pending my radio therapy sessions and whether they've ended or something. More to be revealed when the gorgeous Meena returns from wherever she's gone.