Chemo 4, Day 2

So...I am officially past the halfway mark. 4 chemos down, baby.

The bad news is that my latest concoction of meds, Nexium + Kytril + Metoclopramide, which I took 1 hour before my chemo, didn't seem to do a damned thing for me. I still vomited right on schedule. Well, even earlier in fact. And then again a few hours later. And I got bonus hits of drowsiness from the metoclopramide and heart palpitations from the Nexium on top of it all. As I was gasping over my now faithful old friend Bucket, which I had propped on the sink this time, a position that feels better than any I'd tried earlier, I was thinking about how the Eskimos purportedly have over a hundred words for snow. And I was wondering whether if I do this enough, I'll have multiple words for vomiting.

This round of vomiting felt different from the earlier rounds, probably due to the GERD. I was sort of belch-vomiting. It was noise-accompanied by the kind of belching that guys do to out-belch each other at the dinner table. Hilarious. I've never been able to belch on purpose. And here I was belching and upchucking at the same time. Holland's Got Talent!

The contents of my vomit were rather uninteresting this time. A puddle of murky brown goop. Brown bagel plus hummus. I will go for a more colorful mix in Round #5. If I'm going to throw up no matter what I do, I'm going for broke. Tuna fish sandwiches, spicy hot Thai food, cheese pizza. That bagel plus hummus tasted awful. The Dutch do not know how to make a good brown bagel.

Today, when I woke up, I decided to forgo the Nexium and metoclopramide. Back to square one with Kytril alone. The morning was a bit rough. My predinisone pills were hard to swallow, and I forced down some cereal because I know I didn't get a single bite yesterday that I didn't eject back out.

The Uglies saved me. Yes, the Uglies. This great book by Scott Westerfeld, written for teenagers, about a utopian/dystopian world where normal people are considered ugly until they turn 16 and then get operations to become pretty. Besides all the interesting social, political, philosophical, ethical implications of this way of preventing war and inequality, I loved the high-tech gadgets Scott invented for the book, especially the hyperboards, which you can ride around trees and over whitewater rapids. Scott must be a snowboarder!

Anyway, I spent most of last night reading the book in between vomits and finished up the book in the morning after breakfast. By noon, I started to feel better, though after I finished the Uglies, I decided to pop Cloverfield into the DVD player. That might have been a small mistake. Not as bad as watching Sweeney Todd on Day 2, but almost. Cloverfield is about an attack on NYC by a giant monster, but the entire movie is filmed with a hand-held camera. As you can imagine, because it's an action/monster movie, there's a fair amount of blood. The camera is constantly shaking and being dropped. Even if I wasn't nauseous at the start of the movie, I would have been at the end. But nevertheless, I made it through to the end, by periodically looking away from the TV and finding a fixed steady point above my couch. I love sci-fi action films!

Today turned out to be a movie marathon day. On Thursday night, I had managed to cycle to the public library and hauled off 6 movies. It was a real bonanza. Usually, I am lucky to find one movie there I really want to see. After Cloverfield, I watched Ellen Degeneres Live. She's fantastic. And laughter is, after all, the best medicine. Next was Sicko, which was fascinating, revealing, and heartbreaking at the same time. My favorite Michael Moore film so far. And of course, bound to churn up all sorts of thoughts about my own predicament. On the one hand, I'm so lucky that this happened to me overseas in Amsterdam. On the other hand, I want to move back to the U.S. and watching this movie made me realize that I might be trapped here. My only way back would be to find a job at a large enough company where group health is offered, and then NOT LOSE THAT JOB. The bit at the end, when you realized that even Cuba offers far better health care to its citizens (and in the movie, five of ours!) than the U.S. free of charge, was the most affecting. I had to cry when I saw how grateful the heroes of 9-11 were to finally be heard and not have to fight the stupid health insurers anymore. I can't believe how messed up things are in America these days.

I followed up with Corpse Bride, a fun movie. And now, I'll finish up with either Tropic Thunder or In Bruges. Probably the former, as I hear that there's at least one scene in In Bruges that's incredibly disturbing to watch. Movie time...