Rough Week

It's been a rough week, chemo-wise. I seriously think that I'm starting to break down a little, and perhaps the doctors who developed the ABVD protocol knew what they were doing when they limited it to six months. It's probably one of those minimax things - how to get the maximum cancer-killing benefit from the program without killing the patient in the meantime.

Curiously, I'm no longer nauseated. I haven't had an attack of nausea or needed a nausea pill in a couple of weeks. It's as though my innards finally just gave up the struggle, rolled over, and died. All the other symptoms are still present, though, and they don't go away as quickly as they used to. Intestinal pain, slowly worsening neuralgia in my legs and hands, fingernails falling apart, crushing fatigue that verges into genuine depression at times, the usual suspects. The neuralgia in my hands is slowly growing into the least favorite of my problems - every now and then I'll touch something in the wrong way and I'll experience a strange explosion of sharp, stabbing pain in my hand, as though my nerves are stuck at full throttle and can't tell the difference between mild pressure and a deep puncture. This may have nothing to do with chemo, but my oncologist and chemo nurse said that it isn't unknown for chemo to cause that sort of difficulty.

I feel like I've aged ten years in the last six months. I'm curious to see how much of that time I'll recover when chemo ends, and how much is just gone forever.

But what's a boy to do? Watch the Food Network, do the chemo, and hope for the best, mainly.

Speaking of the Food Network, I'm curious to see how this "next Food Network star" thing is going to work out. Here's hoping that the winner isn't someone with unfortunate hair or a penchant for distinctive fashion. With all due respect to Guy Fieri and his fans, he more than fulfills my expectations for "distinctiveness" on the Food Network. I hope the winner is someone who is as normal as TV allows, such as Tyler. I don't even want another Alton Brown - one guy with customized sock puppets and a fondness for vertigo-inducing camera moves is about all I can stand.