chemo

Brian started chemo last night. Watching Brian take chemo – which he does every 4 weeks – makes my skin crawl. I loathe the day he walks in with the pills and has to sort them out for the next 5 nights. Usually the rattle of a paper bag would peek my inquisitive nature causing me to investigate its contents (ya never know, could be chocolate), but this time the rattling of the paper bags is like fingernails on a chalkboard to my ears because of what’s inside. I can’t stand the way Brian has to take the $7 each (AFTER co-pay), anti-nauseating, (constipating-causing), pill an hour before he takes the actual chemo drug. I hate listening to his having to get back up JUST before he is about to fall asleep in order to ingest poison into his body. I loathe almost everything about it, but not in an annoying sense like “listening to someone chew with an open mouth.” It’s not a pet peeve type of hate but a different hate that I can’t explain well. I hate that it is so easy for me to just carry on my own life while he is in the middle of it all. I feel guilty that we barely know Brian is even taking chemo this week. Is that strange? I hate thinking about what it is doing to his poor, battered body. I love him. I hate the fact that this is part of his life. I hate it on so many levels. I hate that he does this 5 out of every 28 days in his life. Makes my self-pity issues I have during the “5-7 out of every 28 days” in my own life seem so petty. I hate that I ponder and analyze it so much.

Brian has another perspective. I love this man. I told him the other day that I hated thinking about what the chemo was doing to the rest of his body. He said, “Then don’t think about that.” He is so valiant. His perspective on the chemo and the “poison” as I refer to it is that it is poison for the cancer. He will do and take whatever is necessary to help him get better, and this is working right now. Why would he worry about what it is doing to the rest of his body when he needs it to do something to the cancer? He loves that this chemo is so easy on the boys and me and that we are relatively unaffected by it. Don’t get me wrong. He hates chemo, too. He just chooses to look at if differently than I do.

Did I mention that I love this man?
KEEP BELIEVING