Jelly legs

I cannot convey how absolutely weird it is, how utterly unnatural, to be in your mid-thirties and not be able to walk across a room, to be exhausted all the time and need to lie down between the simplest of tasks. Looking out car windows, you see people twice your age booking around on sturdy limbs, and you feel envious. It's crazy to read about friends preparing to run marathons and you're wondering if it's time to buy a walker or rent a wheelchair. I don't feel sorry for myself, exactly. Supposedly this is going to pass when the chemicals from the last rounds of chemo (which you've already guessed was ineffective or I'd be partying, right?) wear off a bit more. It's just that this mollusc is not me (I). I don't like or know this person. She lies around while time slips by. She is completely dependent on other people; can't carry her own water glass into the living room...GO AWAY I'M SICK OF YOU.

KAZZIE POWER: ACTIVATE!

This is one of the phrases on my new board of inspiration, a strip of cork my parents helped me (I watched) attach to the back of the bedroom door. I have included pictures of myself when I was well, pictures of my life-giving niece and inspirational notes.

It's worth noting that about a month ago, maybe a bit more, I lost a biggish scab shaped like the island of Krete. I mean it totally disappeared off the face of the earth. I had been so careful not to pick at it and I was really looking forward to getting a good look at it when it finally fell off. It was a remnant of that gaping hole I had left over in my side from the garden-hose sized (zero exaggeration) tube I had leading from my chest cavity to the plastic graduated container which caught all the yucky fluids. So anyway, one day in the hospital I asked my mom to look at my scab and see how it was doing, and she said it was gone, and there was only a scar in its place. We looked everywhere for the scab (bed sheets, floor, etc) but it was nowhere. We didn't really think anybody else would want it...so what happened to it? I think it must have come off at night and when I got up to go to the bathroom, it fell out of my shirt without my noticing, and the cleaning lady swept it up the next morning without realizing what it was. So I never really got closure with that chest hole. I mean I did in the literal sense, but not in the emotional sense. Now sometimes I feel the tug of a phantom scab, like amputees and their phantom limbs. Very strange.

I am now the proud taker of anti-depressants, along with the ten other pills I take every day. When the consulting psychiatrist asked me if I'd like something to boost my mood, I said, Bring it on, it can't hurt. So in about a month or so I will be chipper, pleasant and optimistic. For now, not quite.

Dude it is weird to type with no sensation in your fingertips.