The Symptoms with the Cure

I would develop a cure for cancer that involved aged Brandy, Bonn fires under a full moon, lots of music and the beating of drums and young maidens chanting and dancing circles around me. I should have been a doctor.

My symptoms came rushing all at once mid-stride through this process of twelve chemos. I have not found a way to describe the fatigue so you could really understand it. Those in our
"secret society" know it well and have equal difficulty in expressing it. It is just indescribable.

The first "sign" was when I fainted. It was the end of June and I was watering my overhead petunias, both arms above my head holding the hose and I just keeled over, thankfully landing between two tomato plants. From then on every time I received my chemos I got steroids. I don't think I would have made it without them. Within the next two weeks I lost all my hair and I do mean everywhere; it fell out in clumps, I didn't even have eyebrows! And then I couldn't eat. I never had nausea, a bit of luck there, but I just couldn't eat. I would put food in my mouth and literally my brain would say, "spit it out or die". I spat it out. I lost fifty pounds in two months and this is not a diet I would recommend. I aged five years every two weeks and became, like the "others", a very old man. I have no strength to walk around the block.

Then there are the finger nails and toe nails. I lost my big toe and thumb nails. They just sort of come loose and fall off. There is no pain to it. The nails I got to keep became curled and tight like claws. I didn't get neuropathy until the very end and it got worse long after I had finished my chemo. The day I finished chemo I was so happy and I was still alive but it would be at least a month later before the poison left my body and I began to heal, a long, slow process in itself!

Tomorrow I will tell you about the marijuana, it is not the same stuff you had when you were in college!