Chapter 1: Pop

I slept last night! It wasn’t the sleep of my dreams (see what I did there?), but all things considered, it was pretty good. I woke up feeling not only human, but sort of normal. I languished in bed for a while listening to my kids’ cheery voices playing some sort of pretend down the hall. It was, dare I say, delightful.

The morning carried on in a very regular way. If you are keeping tabs, regular, is very good. I drove kids around, dropping them off like same-day dry cleaning that you can pick up in 7 hours or less.

I had breakfast with my mom and we even did some shopping at the local mall (stay tuned for what we were shopping for in a later post. It’s a doozy.)

So much normalcy. Feeling good, doing average stuff. If this is what chemo is going to be like, I have so got this.

Chapter 2: Pop

I was childless and free. I ate something for lunch I couldn’t taste (not-great, but minor setback in bigger picture of the day) and headed to my Aunt Carol’s pool.

Now allow me to explain something to you. My Aunt Carol is stunningly more fabulous than your Aunt Carol. She exudes sophistication, class and kindness, all with the faintest of British accents (she’s not British in the citizenship sense, more the Madonna sense). Fabulous in every way, including her dope-ass backyard and swimming pool.

I floated in luxury in this bad boy for close to 2 hours without a single child screaming about a melted Fruit By The Foot.

Heaven.

Chapter 3: Fizz

It was bound to happen, I had to pick up my dry-cleaning, ehem-children, at some point.

It started ok. I do miss them when I don’t see them for large swaths of time. Then I spend 30 minutes with them and am reminded how difficult this 2-7 year old sentence is.

Add to this that my body also remembered around this time that it is teeming with poison. Me—>Wall.

Fatigue is something I’ve heard a lot about but haven’t really felt yet since chemo. Until tonight.

My muscles, ligaments, bones and brain suddenly were all like… Nope. This coincides with all three children and both dogs deciding it is time to start screaming/barking for an indefinite amount of time.

When my husband finally walked in the door I looked him in the eye and said, I need to leave this place… Now. I need to use the very little energy left in my body to take a walk in silence. 

I walk out the door to music blaring from the nearby Concert In The Park series.

As I start my sad lap around the block in my pajama pants, what song accompanies my desperate attempt at silence?

‘And it burns, burns, burns, a ring of fire, a ring of fire’