Stuffed

I hope everyone had a pleasant Christmas. Mine was. It was somewhat more low-key than usual, but it was still nice. I just finished Christmas dinner (turkey, stuffing, candied yams and all that manner of thing) and one this is obvious: I can't eat nearly as much as I used to. I read somewhere that it's actually a myth that the stomach shrinks over time if you reduce how much you eat. I've also read that it really does shrink.

I don't know. I don't have any way of measuring the capacity of my stomach except to count how many plates of food I can consume in the average Christmas dinner. It's gone down from about two and a half to about a half. Did my gut shrink? Is this some odd byproduct of chemo or cancer? Don't know.

I love the procedure of eating, and the Christmas dinner was exceptionally tasty. Who among us is not driven half-mad with hunger during the hours that it takes a turkey to roast? But somehow I just can't pack the food in like in the old days. It's a healthy change, I'm sure - forcing my innards to accept fourteen pounds of turkey and potatoes cannot possibly be good for a person. But I love candied yams so much I'm tempted to pack a few chunks into my cheeks so I can experience the flavor without actually having to eat anything.

Still, there's a kind of dark shadow hanging over Christmas. Monday I go to the hospital so we can schedule my second transplant. I've developed a sort of loose dread of the second transplant. I don't really want to spend two or three weeks in the hospital, and who could really look forward to seven days of high-dose chemotherapy? I don't really worry that anything will go wrong and I'll die, though there is a small chance of that happening. Nor do I really worry that my cancer will come back and that it will all have been for nothing.

Mostly I'm just sick of chemo. Chemo has been the dominant fact of my life for the last year and I'm growing weary of the nausea, fatigue, diarrhea and general sickness. I know it's all necessary if I expect to outlive my cancer, but I still dread it. I try to distract myself with movies, models and other hoohah, but it seems that no matter how hard I try, I end up gazing slack-jawed at the wall and dreading chemo. I've known people who actually ended up refusing chemo, preferring to die of cancer than live with the sickness. I'm not at that point, and I don't ever expect to reach that point - but after a year of chemo, I've gained at at least a glimmer of understanding of how one can reach such an extremis.

I expect, barring any complications, that I'll go into the hospital on the 30th to start the scorched-earth chemo. That's less than a week away! I have no idea what to take, or how I'll keep myself occupied. I just hope that my transplant goes well, my stem cells implant quickly, and I get out of the hospital as quickly as humanly possible.

When this is all over I'd like to go to Egypt and take a cruise up the Nile. Who's in?