The Day After

5 am. The nausea is bad. I drag myself from bed and stumble about for the bottle of compazine, trying not to wake Sugar. I am in no shape to take her out yet. I manage to choke down the pill and flop back in bad without rousing anyone. I toss and turn for over an hour and finally admit defeat. Besides, Sugar is whining to be taken out. Sigh. It's starting out to be a bumpy day.

The compazine finally kicks in and I am able to take the next round of meds and sit in the blue chair. I am an emotional mess today, tears spilling for no reason down my cheeks, follow by ridiculous bouts of giggling over silly stuff - the prednisone must be really kicking. At one point I was recounting whether I had actually done anything constructive, and my poor brain did this:

Take the yellow pill so you can keep down the pink pill which you need to take the two white pills so you can be awake and sturdy enough to tolerate the blue pill which you desperately need in order to take the yellow pill so you can keep down the pink pill . . .

See what I mean? Messed up. It will do me no good to try the Einstein stuff now. I am beyond hope for today's intelligence quotient. Might as well give in and watch mind numbing movies. Ah, yes. The movie disaster plan! Got it covered. Went to the downtown library and checked out several Cadfael flicks along with a documentary on Benjamin Franklin, one on the apostle John on the island of Patmos, a movie about good old JS bach, a Charlie Chan movie, a Nancy Drew, and something called Intermezzo with Ingrid Bergman. THAT ought to give me a variety to pick from without being too mind numbing.

I forgot one teeny weeny little thing. Most of what I checked out were VHS, and I had forgotten that our deck was defunct. Well, shoot. Poor Kiel had to run around trying to find a VHS machine which of course they don't make anymore. He finally got a double deck (VHS, DVD) with the thought that we were going to encounter this little predicament again in 3 weeks.

By the time he got back with it and hooked it up, the real trouble had begun - the pains and body reactions to the chemo were flaring ferociously. I was very happy for the distraction, but didn't have the stamina for much. I finally gave up and went to bed to rock myself in the quiet of my own room. Einstein will have to wait. Coherence will come another day.