Hungry

I am up at 3:15 with a feeling that my brain has finally come back from the galaxy far, far and away - and it appears there might have been some salvageable parts after all.  

I feel a little weak, a little unsturdy, a little off balance, but I woke up an hour ago and felt something I haven't felt in one long week -- hungry! 

They press you during chemo to take your anti-nausea drugs to not only ward off nausea, but also the subsequent weight loss.  It appears if you can keep your weight up, you do much better.  Usually, I am quite a champion at this - "you need me to gain 2 pounds - why Bob,  I can double that and give you 4 EASILY".    

Now those two pounds that could cost me happy neutrophils sneak away unawares....

Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday left me not even wanting to smell food, let alone eat it.  So it's kind of a "nice-force-feed" -- I know I need it, so I take in the calories I can, then leave the room, because the smells are overwhelming.  Scott and I counted up my calories on Saturday - the bloodiest battle day so far - and they worked out to be a little over 600.  and that was 589 more than I wanted to put past my chapped, sore lips. 

You receive a long acting anti-nausea injection when you get your IV chemo treatment and I can pretty much tell you the very minute that wears off 2 and a 1/2 days later - the windows fly open, my skin starts to smell different to me, and heaven help any food cooking at that moment - it's a done deal.  Ain't gonna get past these lips...... Your brain makes a "gag" connection if you will.  That's what all the fuss is about getting your anti-nausea meds into you - yes, it's to keep you eating now, but it is also to keep you eating in two months.  The medication breaks or buffers your brain from connecting the poison it knows is in your body and should expel, with the food you are eating - the food you are needing to eat.  If you do not take those meds, your brain will pretty much make a connection to every food item you have come in contact with while on chemo, and tell you it is bad - it whispers "don't eat it - they are trying to kill you".  And it will bring back the nausea feeling, and you cannot eat it. 

Your brain is just trying to protect you - like say it did with ancient man - "dude, that 10 day old carcass should just not be viewed as food."  As with any good warning to any good man, he was hungry, ate it and then he went off looking for a happy barfing ground for about three days - his body beating it over and over into his brain the connection; and we as mankind have benefited greatly from cave-man-food-trials-and-errors..... Otherwise, we would all have rotting carcasses lined up hanging from the garage rafters - it sure beats a 20 minute run to the local butcher shop.  

So you have to work hard to break that poison-brain-food-connection.  Or so my kind chemo nurses at the James hammered into my brain as they watched me drop two pounds a week for a bit. 

Which brings me to my original point - this morning at 3am, I woke up to a lost feeling and thought I should for once indulge it - I came downstairs, used my little $2 Ikea milk-frother thing whipping up some nice milk foam with a touch of sugar; then opened a can of peaches and mixed the two together. 

Heaven. 

I know there is great metaphor in all of this, but my brain even though back, is weary, and finds it difficult to state the obvious - if we willingly invite poison into our lives - then give our brains shut-off valves to allow this poison to do it's work ---- then what does that all mean?  There it stops thinking.  Because either the poison is good and we have to endure it until it does it's job to completion while almost killing us in the process; or the poison is bad, and we have to expel it and telling our brains it is something it is not can get tricky in a lot of areas of you life......

If I am taking this poison willingly to void me of all cancer, then I am back to the Passover idea.  And I am kind of stuck there anyways, so if I am needing a poison so extreme that it kills off a lot of other parts of me, and wreaks all kinds of havoc just to weed out the cancer cells that can and will take over my body; I guess if I am willing to do that physically to get rid of the black ugly stuff that my left arm has protected and allowed to grow for a while, distracting my brain cells other ways, I guess the question is this:  How willing am I to do the Feast of Unleavened Bread - an almost perfect picture to what is happening in my body -- how willing am I to try that on my soul and spirit? 

If it hurts this bad and has this many repurcussions and is taken this seriously by a team of doctors that I didn't even know their names 6 weeks ago - if it is that repugnant, that black, that evil, that life threatening to do all this to rid my body of those cells - those blobs of black that showed up on my ultrasound all through that lymph node chain - then how can I look at my own sin with any less fercocity and work to expel it from my body as well?? 

How can I??