The First of the Days

Radiation therapy and chemotherapy will be concurrent for almost seven weeks. After that, chemo gonna storm the stage and play a relentless horrifyingly bad guitar shredding solo for an additional twelve months. For the love of all that is sacred and profane, Jesus wept, and it was blood, and his mother was furious, and punched a donkey. Such are the effects of hearing too much bad shredding.

Last Friday was when we began the zapping. Oh, 'twas a fine afternoon, the sunshine lovely, the not-unwelcome butterflies gettin' down and groovy in my belly as I confidently popped my temozolomide before getting out of my mother's vehicle. (Look at my paranoia - I even put on nitrile gloves. And for what! I'm already supremely toxic, ffs).

My sister snapped a shot of me with magical dots in black markers on my hand, and then I happily headed to the room where THE MACHINE was waiting for me. Where my face without my face was already on the table. Where the exorcism takes place. I got on said table and it all happened in a speedy, secret way: THE MACHINE didn't tell me what was going on. It hissed hideous non-sounds at me, spiraled and zoomed around me and literally spun the bed - and then it was done for the day. Out the door into the early spring air I sprang, Day One complete. I'm sure some professionals explained a thing or two to me while I was there, but it was irrelevant. Irrelevant. Invisible sparkles had occurred, and Oh, the beauty of it all! A brilliant start! I felt GREAT.

Then. Three hours later, THE NAUSEA. From what I can only assume was my body telling the temozolomide to get out, but possibly also the effects of invisible sparkles and death rays. I was shaking and sick and vomiting the universe into a 4L bucket over and over and over again. And I'm sorry, body, I really am. It has to be done lest you forget you have a traitor within you, a cellular saboteur that is out to get you. So puke, puke!

But it's all been fine since. No nausea, touch wood. Power of the four dots, yo.