Wondering what to make of life before the Necessary End

I’ve done 5 chemo sessions now. I’ve only got one to do. And I’ve finally got the routine down pat:

1. Wash sheets, towels, clothes, everything. After chemo, I won’t have the energy to do washing for a week. Get organized.
2. Visit the second hand bookshop for pulp reading material.
3. Stock up on food. Not ordinary weekly shopping, but food that’s instantly edible with no preparation. First, I have no energy to cook when I’m not well. Second, the smell of hot food cooking is disgusting, so cold food is good. Grapes, cherries, bananas, ice cream, cheese, olives, biscuits, crackers. I have to drink a lot, so add fruit juice, tea, milk, soft drinks.
4. Look up the weather forecast for the next week. The Bad Days will be particularly bad if it’s hot. Plan accordingly.
5. Tell friends, again, that the Bad Days are coming, and that I probably just won’t answer the phone on those days. So don’t bother ringing.
6. Get out half a dozen lightweight DVDs ready to watch. I might have the energy to put on a DVD. I don’t have the energy to scrounge around in drawers looking for something to watch.
7. If necessary, get my hair cut. It’s easier to do the Bad Days feeling really crook with short, barely-needs-to-be-styled-each-morning hair than with too-long, it’s-ready-for-a-new-cut hair. Do this even if it makes me feel guilty.
8. Try to organize a friend to go to the chemo session with me.
9. Day before chemo, get the blood tests done.
10. Morning of chemo, drink as much as possible (1 or 2 litres) of water, tea, juice, anything, before going to the hospital. This really does seem to help make the veins “juicy” (their word, not mine!) and make it easier to insert the cannula for the IV drip.

My experience so far (5 and a bit down, one and a bit to go):

1. Healthy food that’s easy to prepare, for the Bad Days. I got lots of chocolate, ice cream and shiraz. Sometimes I got confused and got chocolate icecream. Whatever. Stock up. If you’re an American and prone to suing the anonymous authors of self-indulgent cynical blogs, then let it be known than I’m not providing dietary advice here.
2. Preen. Removes mascara from pillow cases. Needed after a few nights of crying yourself to sleep.
3. A friend to take to the chemo session. It helps.
4. Books. For the not-so-bad days, non-fiction or literature. For the bad days, plot-free airport fiction. (In my first chemo cycle I read 4 books in 5 days. I can’t remember any of the plots.)
5. DVDs. For the late nights when it all gets too much and television offers wall-to-wall promos for machines to harden your abs. Wherever they are.
6. Blood. Lots of it.

   First, you have to get a blood test done the day before each chemo session. One nurse quipped to me that the aim was that, by the time you finish treatment, you’ll have no blood left because they will have taken it all.

   Second, the chemo drugs kill good cells as well as bad ones. They’re particularly good at killing off your white blood cells and platelets and other kinds of blood cells that I don’t understand. For further information, consult your local vampire.

7. Knowing the pattern. I was advised to keep track of how I felt each day. That’s really helped, because I know how long the Bad Days last, I know when they’ll occur, so I can plan, and I can get myself through them knowing that I’ll break back out into the light soon.
8. Chocolate. If you’re an American and prone… oh, never mind.

I’ve read all kinds of purple prose about having a good attitude and wanting to “fight” the cancer and be “strong”. I have no idea what those things actually mean. Seems like self-fulfilling self-delusion to me. I don’t think it matters whether I’m feeling like “Oh, this is all just a waste of time” or “Oh, this will cure my cancer and I’ll live to be 85″.