Wallowing

Today I have this unstoppable need to wallow in my misery. I feel like crap. I can't figure out how to escape this nausea. I worked this morning, because I knew that if I lay down and tried to rest, I would just feel more nauseous. But work was just a series of crises. Everyone is stressed. One person is on vacation. One person just came back from vacation. Things broke down over the weekend. Things are urgently due today that relied on the things that broke down over the weekend. So on top of the nausea, I started to feel anxious. And in the end, I just FUCK IT. I dumped it all on my poor colleague. I said I'd check back in later.

I've always been relatively optimistic. Mostly during this whole ordeal, I've been still there for my friends for their problems. Still doing most of things I like to do. I've been careful to not make any promises I can't keep, and I've been mostly successful in keeping the promises I've made. I feel as though I've been handling it all more or less gracefully.

But today...today...I just have this feeling that I can't take much more of this. Maybe a part of me knew all along this day might come. Which is why I never distributed this blog address to my friends and family. Especially because so many of them are overseas, I think they would only feel helpless when confronted with the negative feelings that are bound to surface from time to time. For them, I try to stay positive in my emails. But for my own sanity, once in a while, I really need to vent my frustrations and my fears.

At this moment, my biggest fear is that I won't be able to go on. It was just during this cycle that I started to have anticipatory nausea. I have about an inch of all-bran cereal left in my cereal box -- a cereal that I used to love. But every time I take it out to finish it off, I am overwhelmed by nausea. The smell of that bran reminds me too much of the brown bagel I ate on my first day of chemo this cycle -- the one that I threw up a few hours later. I had to look away from the carry bag I brought to the chemo room when I yanked out my laptop cable. Even writing about this is starting to make me anxious and nauseous.

I don't feel at all supported by my doctor in this battle. He's happy that the chemo drugs are working; I'm certain that my next full CT scan will show a big improvement. And I should be happy about it too. But instead, I'm having fantasies about not showing up for my 5th chemo treatment. I want to buy a ticket to the French riviera instead. I want to sit on a beach drinking Kir Royal and watching surfers roll in on the waves.