I am awake but my eyes are still closed, sunlight angling to invade my throbbing head. My stomach is churning like the Mediterranean in a mistral. The bottle of Zofran is on the table, six feet away, but that's five feet too far. Anticipating the wave of seasickness that will wash over me the second I stand up, I choose to lie still where maybe I'll drown in my misery. I feel sick and tired and, irrationally, utterly defeated that I had to start taking the anti-nausea medication after this last round of chemo. Now I can't even reach the drugs. Humiliating.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Thursday, May 22, 2008
A Flashing Insight Into Infinity
Although there are oceans we must cross
And mountains that we must climb
I know every gain must have a loss
So pray that our loss is nothing but time
--The Mills Brothers “Till Then”
Anyone who knows me knows it was only a matter of time before my weekly Wednesday posts started showing up on Thursdays. Chronically late, I am the quintessential procrastinator, the reporter who never missed a deadline but always made the editor sweat, still writing, tweaking, making changes up until the last possible second.
Everything I read tells me I’m supposed to take it easy, not work too hard, don’t do anything I don’t want to do, but if I didn’t have a self-imposed deadline, I wouldn’t write at all. My original plan was to post on Wednesdays and Sundays, like my favorite New York Times columnist, but I accomplished that exactly zero times. It may not seem like much, but writing twice a week is a tough schedule, especially without the incentive of the Times paycheck.
And mountains that we must climb
I know every gain must have a loss
So pray that our loss is nothing but time
--The Mills Brothers “Till Then”
Anyone who knows me knows it was only a matter of time before my weekly Wednesday posts started showing up on Thursdays. Chronically late, I am the quintessential procrastinator, the reporter who never missed a deadline but always made the editor sweat, still writing, tweaking, making changes up until the last possible second.
Everything I read tells me I’m supposed to take it easy, not work too hard, don’t do anything I don’t want to do, but if I didn’t have a self-imposed deadline, I wouldn’t write at all. My original plan was to post on Wednesdays and Sundays, like my favorite New York Times columnist, but I accomplished that exactly zero times. It may not seem like much, but writing twice a week is a tough schedule, especially without the incentive of the Times paycheck.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
The Big Casino
The morning of my 43rd birthday I woke up with a hangover. Sadly, there had been no party the night before.
Most days these days I wake up feeling hungover.
“I don’t get it,” I whined to a friend over the phone on one especially brutal morning. “I ate a healthy dinner, I didn’t drink, I got a good night’s sleep. Why do I feel like shit?”
“Maybe because they’re poisoning your body.”
Oh, right, I keep forgetting. Fucking chemo.
Most days these days I wake up feeling hungover.
“I don’t get it,” I whined to a friend over the phone on one especially brutal morning. “I ate a healthy dinner, I didn’t drink, I got a good night’s sleep. Why do I feel like shit?”
“Maybe because they’re poisoning your body.”
Oh, right, I keep forgetting. Fucking chemo.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Voice of a Sailor
The great thing about editors is, when they're not busy chopping up your latest example of genius, they can be pretty good for the ego. Sometimes they even have good timing.
Since I am still not feeling well (not feverish--98.2 at last check--just not well), I was happy to discover that I don't have to write about me this week because my editor at Sail magazine did it for me. He's not a bad writer, either...
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