Day Four after chemo is typically a rotten day, and today is in line with the pattern. Val feels like crap. Joint pain bad enough to warrant Vicadin, which leads to its own problems with digestive functioning. Nausea, spaciness, and tingling numbness in her feet. A nasty metallic taste in her mouth, as of chemicals leaching out and coating her tongue. A blank look of endurance on her face.
I hate it.
Yesterday she had a craving, oddly, for cupcakes. They seemed to obliterate the taste of metal in her mouth. Today what she mainly wanted was green beans, which we steamed and ate with Thai food in the company of friends, who diverted us with funny stories. (“There’s something freaky about miniature animals coming right at you!”)
Val says, It’s all traveling. Traveling the interesting road. Traveling through in order to return, or to emerge. Going away and coming back.
Years ago I read a novel by an anthropologist named Joan Abelove who had lived with the Isabo tribe in the Peruvian Amazon. She writes that the Isabo don’t have a word equivalent to our “goodbye”: when someone departs, the Isabo say “catanhue,” which Abelove says means “go and come back.” This captured my imagination, and Val’s when I told her about it, and it lodged in our shared vocabulary. “Go and come back.” I like the graceful stepping aside of “go,” the implication that each of us is free and invited to travel her own path; that traveling is necessary. And I like the open welcome of “and come back.” Go forth, go when you are called to go, go with our blessings; but come back, we want you here, we’ll miss you, we’ll hold your place.
So that’s what we do. We go and come back.
May tomorrow be easier.
D
Thank you for sending news, for putting words out there. I’ll add my voice to yours, let tomorrow be easier, as the toxins wash away and move through (except those that have grabbed onto the remaining tumor bits for targeted destruction). love from me, from here
Try hard candies to banish the awful metallic taste. Sugarless ones are good, but pick your favorite flavor and keep them handy. Even those little Altoids can be good (but maybe too strong.)
My partner had problems with foot pain (peripheral neuropathy) too, and the best thing I can say about that is that she tells me it got better once the chemo was over.
Laughter is supposed to boost the immune system, so encourage your friends to keep bringing funny stories or find some hilarious DVDs to check out and enjoy.