Every so often, I get a familiar panic regarding my health. I feel like a small muscle ache or an over exhausted day are omens for my impending doom. I know it’s a silly feeling, but I can’t help these invasive thoughts, only combat them.
I suppose they make sense considering I once had a variant of life-threatening cancer…Read More »
Eventually everyone had to get back to his or her job (or in my brother’s case: high school), and the fervor died down. It was back to my Mom and Stepdad for the most part, as it was the majority of the weekdays. At any rate, it was amazing to consistently have family there when able, for their company made the harder days just that much easier.
A few days into my chemo, I had expected my hair to hop off of my head like rats off of a sinking ship, but surprisingly these follicles were holding strong. Every morning I’d take a shower, and every morning there was maybe a few, but nothing more than a normal Monday. Will I even lose my hair? Maybe I have some rare resistance to the popular side effect– a key within my DNA! Perhaps not.
Saturday approached faster than I had expected. The future always seems so far away until it sticks you right in your android chest receptacle, er– Port-a-cath.
They had to hydrate my blood first, so I had been on a steady drip of saline for the past few days. It is true what they say: when they first push the saline through it goes right to your taste buds. It’s disgusting, like gargling seawater laced with a medical “after smell.” At least it was for me.
At that moment I was reminded that I had never been hospitalized before; no pneumonia, bad fever, or any broken legs for that matter–
Well, I did break my wrist once in third grade, but I wasn’t hospitalized. It was a stupid mistake…
Leukemia.
Now that I finally had a focal point to all of this nonsense, Hoover Dam burst at its seams and out came tears of pain. I’m going to die. I hadn’t thought that thought for quite some time.
It was dark. There I was, with my Mom by my side as the back of the vehicle rocked ever so gently over Route 11. I sat there silent for most of the trip; thousand-yard stare with a hint of pain. We stopped at a gas station. The guys in front asked me if I’d wanted anything.
With little mental acuity to process the inquiry, I requested an apple. The two men hopped out and the vehicle fell dead silent.
My Mom and I really didn’t know what to say. I mean, how much time has to pass before you can make light of the situation? Were we beyond that point; did we even possess a sense of humor at a time like this? It had appeared that we had them revoked indefinitely. Could you even muster as so much as a chuckle when you were sitting in the back of an ambulance at midnight?
