Radioactive Tube Gloom

When I write words on a page it becomes apparent to me that I'm losing my shit. "Ummmm, nobody needs to hear that, Danielle," I say to myself 68 individual times as I hammer on the delete key with my Malibu Barbie manicure.

"Slightly alarming.  
Inappropriate.  
TMI.  
That is hilarious to you and exactly no one else."

I have ten million thoughts blasting through my brain on any given day and approximately zero of them feel sane to me.

It used to be that my only downtime was half an hour of meditative space I made every morning before I chased children around all day.  That, in retrospect, was a healthy amount of downtime for an Enneagram Type 4.  Now this free space lurks around my person at all times, threatening to swallow me up and chomp on my brains.  I can't seem to make proper use of it--there's so much of it that it disorients me.

It's not that I don't have things to do.  My days are kept pretty full with logistical cancer shit and more mentally-constructive pursuits such as reading, frolicking in nature, snuggling things, conspiring with friends, etc.  But every intermission between these activities feels like one thousand pounds of weight on my being.  Like I've come home from a tropical vacation to my agonizingly boring roommate, who has eaten all my TJ's snacks and wants to show me memes of Melania Trump. And the roommate is me, or rather, my mind that won't shut up.

Okay, so imagine that you don't have a job or eyelashes and are going mentally insane as a result and now you must get a PET scan which entails first of all, avoiding carbs for 24 hours 😩, and second, getting injected with dye that is so radioactive it comes in a giant metal syringe.

During the hour it takes for this junk to do its thang in your body, you have to sit perfectly still and silent in a room by yourself.  You mustn't fidget or perform any mentally stimulating tasks such as reading, for fear that the dye will accumulate in places it shouldn't.  You're simply left alone to enjoy an hour's worth of your own paranoid thoughts.  Fortunately, you just finished binge-watching The Handmaid's Tale. Once the poison has dispersed, you have the pleasure of laying in a tube for another thirty minutes with your hands strung above your head, so that your limbs go completely numb and begin to mirror your frame of mind.

It's a lot for a depressed wacko like myself.  I came outta that thing all super hangry and radioactive and wanted to nuke someone right in the face.  (I was instructed to keep away from small children and pregnant women for the rest of the day til my atoms stopped disintegrating or something.) My dad, who had driven me to the hospital, had conveniently wandered off, so I paced the halls looking for him in desperation.  I attempted to exit through the front doors, but got tangled in a mob of family members whose relative had died upstairs just an hour before. I begrudgingly listened to them rattle on with lament and I feigned puppy dog eyes, best as I could. Wickedly, I thought, "Yea my mom's dead too, please stop blocking the damn door."

I found Pops after another ten minutes of scouring the piddle-scented halls, but then I had to wait 9 whole days for the results of my test.

Day 9 is today:
Negative PET.  Complete metabolic response. No active lymphoma found.

I feel my sanity slowly return and I cry til my falsies fall off.  Fuck. Yes.

 

Hair Today, Goon Tomorrow

Remember my hair? It was nice. When I was a kid, I watched that episode of the Brady Bunch in which Jan buys a big, brunette, permed bouffant-looking wig and thinks she's hot shit, and I was like, totally feeling what she was putting down. In those early years of childhood, I drew a lot of pictures of myself with wavy, black, "Snow White" hair and imagined saving my pennies to buy a wig like Jan did. However, as I got older, I began to appreciate the soft, auburn qualities of my natural hair, and realized its super-straightness was quite conducive to maintaining perfect bangs, which is a look I have embraced for basically my entire life.

As an adult, I have never taken my hair for granted. On several occasions during my morning meditative shout-outs to the Universe, I have made a point of expressing gratitude for my tresses (as well as my more ethereal fortunes--I'm not a completely shallow twat).

When that first oncologist prick told me I'd need chemo and my hair would fall out, I thought, "No, that's actually impossible. My hair would never betray me, I have shown it too much love." That didn't turn out to be entirely inaccurate. Although I shaved my head in order to avoid traumatic clumps from adorning my pillow, my hair hasn't fallen out much.  It's definitely thinner, but continues to grow, and my husband has to give my a buzz every few weeks, which is sort of precious. Despite my bygone wishes to have a raven coiffure, I now pray every day that my hair does not choose to grow back a different shade or texture when this is all said and done. This is apparently common with chemo. I think it sounds very rude. Haven't I been through enough?!

You might be thinking, "But Danielle, your plethora of wig fashions are just so fun!" To which I would reply, "Yes, true, thank God for wigs. But do you know how long it takes me to get ready in the morning? Wigs are a real pain in the ass and don't sit naturally on your head all day, which brings about a great deal of paranoia for someone who is an image-conscious type."

I might also add that my eyelashes and eyebrows have almost completely fallen out of my face, so drawing eyebrows and gluing falsies every day is a real enterprise. Then, when I take it all off at the end of the day, I feel like Matt Lucas and don't want anyone to look at me.

When I first went to have my hair shaved off, I had my hairdresser pony it up into little tails before he buzzed it, so I could send it in to be donated. It sat in a bag on my kitchen table for a few weeks, and every so often I'd open up the bag and hold the bundle up to the light and watch it shine in the sun.  I'd pet it like a cute baby animal. Sometimes I'd flop it over my forehead to remember what my bangs looked like.

I admit, I never sent the thing to donation. I keep it like a creepy souvenir. I check on it often in its little bag home. It's just such a comfort to me--an old friend. I've thought about making some art project with it, but for now I just like to keep it close at hand, in case of some anxiety-driven emergency. Cancer seriously makes you weird.

Weirder.

Weirdest.