A Lesson

I'm at the halfway point in my chemotherapy, and I've learned one thing. If you can possibly not work while doing chemo, don't! This chemo-and-work stuff is for the birds and I only do it out of economic necessity. If I didn't need the money, I'd stay home.

It isn't that chemo leaves one feeling too bad to work, though it does leave one feeling bad. The main problem is that chemo is highly inconvenient. I don't want to gross anyone out, but the blunt fact of chemo (or my chemo, anyway) is that it's dangerous to be more than a minute or two away from a bathroom at any given time. The moment the urge to go the bathroom hits, you'd best beat feet and get to the bathroom because you've got about sixty seconds before the mere urge turns into a quite uncontrollable expulsion.

I used to travel to work pretty light, with everything I wanted in my pockets (phone, iPod and keys, and that's about it). Now I travel with a fairly large canvas bag that contains my chemo road kit. Pills of various sorts, some prescription and some not. Hard candy for when I get sick of the "chemo aftertaste." A sweater for when I get too cold. Suitable lunch products, usually soup and a can of soda. Gatorade. And down in the very bottom of the bag, spare clothes for when one can't get to a bathroom in time and there is An Official Problem.

Usually when that happens I just go home, because changing clothes alone isn't enough. But at least a fresh change of clothes permits one to assume a guise of public respectability long enough to get to the car.

Yes, chemo is very inconvenient. Lunch becomes problematic, because you have to settle, every day, the question "Is thinking about food going to make me sick?" If you drive anywhere, you had best know where the convenience stores are on the route because you may need their bathrooms. There are certain days where leaving the house for any reason at all is a bad idea. And the hell of it is that even on the days when I know it's going to be difficult (the Friday after chemo being the worst) I still have to go to work.

I'm not complaining - not really. I'm just saying that if you don't have to work during your chemo, do yourself a favor and don't try. I've been doing it for three months and it just isn't worth it. The stress alone is more than I can stand some days. But I guess that's the true definition of a wage slave, when you need the money so bad you have to work through the messy sticky horror that is chemotherapy.

But it beats dying. Doesn't it?