Mordor's Fires

I have emerged from an underworld that not even JRR. Toilken, with the "Lord of the Rings" novels could invent.  Toilken made up a character, an "unlikeliest-of-heroes" sort named Frodo - and literally sent poor Frodo through hell and back or - in keeping with the story - to Mordor and back.  In the tale, before Frodo is chosen, this is how the council describes Mordor:

"One does not simply walk into Mordor. Its black gates are guarded by more than just orcs. There is evil there that does not sleep, and the Great Eye is ever watchful. It is a barren wasteland, riddled with fire and ash and dust, the very air you breathe is a poisonous fume."

I did not go looking for Mordor these last four days - but Mordor found me.  


*****


When our son was in Iraq and had opportunity to call home, we would chit-chat a bit and when I would ask him "how are you doing, really?", he finally said "How much do you want to really know?"


I knew he needed a foot and an ear planted somewhere safe - someplace where the snowflakes were falling down and kids didn't get blown up walking down the street.  I knew he needed someone to "dump" on - someone to be a shock absorber to all the poundings his psyche was taking.  I knew he needed to "tell" someone, and know that someone knew what was really going on.


His dad and I both said "we want to know it all".  There were some phone conversations that were beyond description and I still have no idea how to make a mouth move at times when needed, other than the soft prompting of a stalwart angel standing nearby.  We were encouraging, loving, brave - or as brave as you can be when sitting in a temperature controlled home talking to someone pouring scorpions out of his 120 degree sleeping bag half a world away - but we told him to tell it all to us.  That we were ok with it.

Then we would hang up the phone and cry.


We realized quickly there was a whole other world out there, and there were a lot of layers of Hell in it that we had only immunely watched on the news some evenings.   We had no idea what that kind of hell looks like close up - he knew we didn't know - and he wanted to know how much we wanted to know.  The carnage.  The bare escapes.  The last battle count. And how to hold a comrades head while they are dying.  He needed to tell it, we needed to know, but he wasn't so sure we really wanted to know. 


I am kind of at that point today -- I don't know how much you really want to know.

****


I had a new chemo nurse on Wednesday and I don't think she read the careful notes that my last 3 chemo nurses had fastidiously prepared for her.  She gave the steroids too fast - I did not sleep any Wednesday night.  I took an Ambien about 9am Thursday morning - hoping for some rest, and it gave me maybe 3 hours of "doze".  I was still on the "feeling-ok-while-on-steroid" bump which is nothing more than a few layers of saran wrap slapped together made to look like a bridge under your feet while you troll along feeling somewhat fine; but knowing that little bridge is all the while not as strong as it pretends to be and will evaporate when you least expect it.  Yet, it dares to take you precariously over the Niagara river gorge with dangerous, body smashing pointy rocks below -- or across Mordor.

I was not feeling the greatest, but hey, I had just had Carbo added to my other two usual weekly chemos and I was, well, feeling ok for all that - the saran wrap walkway looked pretty darned good for something so dreaded....  I thought I might even (whisper softly here), might even have beat the dreaded "Death-comes-knocking-on-Thursday-afternoons" when that cheap-saran-wrap-steroid-bridge is yanked away unmercifully every time.....Maybe, just maybe, not this time.

There are children's books that describe the innocence of walking along one's way and all of a sudden you find yourself face to face with The Big Bad Wolf.  Or the Trolls under the bridge can grab hold of your ankles and pull you down, but sometimes if you are smart - you sneak around them.  The wicked witch of the west haunts you and hunts you until you have nothing left - but she has only the power you give her.

Or at least I once believed.

I woke up a little "less" on Friday, but still not too bad, and was hopeful that maybe I had tiptoed around the Troll bridge after all.  Maybe Mordor was for those that didn't know how to walk through it properly.  Maybe the Big Bad Wolf had found some other little piggies to torment after his little trist with me didn't get too far.....

Maybe I was out of the woods and Carbo was not the tortuous demon I had remembered it being 28 days ago.  Maybe because it was my first "chemo blast" - it had then hit my body harder and this time would be a gentler, kinder Carbo + Taxal + maximum dose endurable Ro.

I thought I was tiptoeing around it ever so well - I doubted Fred Astaire could not have danced out the the danger better - and we even made plans to maybe "oh just take a drive somewhere Saturday - it would be good to get out of the house, wouldn't it".........

Which is somehow the first line of all innocents caught in the enchanted forest.

I was in the bathroom all Friday night.  I was trying not to vomit, protecting my last Ro pill taken that day.  The two-prong rake was back and every atom in my body was being beat down, raked over and stomped on while the rake pushed around searching for any it might have missed.  I finally snuck into bed at 5, to fall out of bed at 6 while trying to get up.

I couldn't think.  I couldn't put two ideas together.  Scott was up by then and asked me about my meds - I had written down what I had taken but didn't know where the paper was at.  I was shaking, wanting to vomit up water, and could not stand any smell.  I told Scott my  pores smelled differently and made him smell my arms - it was atrocious - he said he didn't smell anything.  I got into the shower and he held me up while I just let the water run over me and over me and over me.  I spent an hour on my hands and knees on my bed with my head burrowed into the pillow crying - it would not quit - not any position, not any meds, not any touch.


I cried out my three verses that I had memorized and wish I had memorized more:  "Have mercy on me Oh God, have mercy on me".  Every organ in my body screamed "too much, too much", and felt like they would burst.  My chest hurt.  I could not do anything to relieve my kidney pain, or my liver, or my stomach, or my colon, or my knees, or my head.

They all said the same thing "too much!  too much!"

The Taxal, my body had made shady friends with.  My body had sulkily shaken hands with the "highest-dose-endurable-experimental-Ro", and just burrows down for the fall-out of the poison bombs for 3 days.

But Carbo it appears, makes no such deals.  At least with high dose experimental drugs.  Maybe alone, we might be at the armistice table this minute.  It shredded the stupid saran wrap bridge to pieces and launched an all out battle.

Mordor style. 


I don't cry easily.  I don't like to show open emotion.

Mordor can make you do anything it wants - there was no holding back anything - not any pain, not any despair, not any hope. 

Every raw chemo coated nerve was screaming out to God Almighty for His wings, His hand, His help.

Scott opened my window wide so the "smells" would all go away.  And they did somewhat several hours later.  He once again washed me, then piled me under blankets, drugged me and hydrated me.  Somewhere along the way, my eyes started to focus again, but I could not read, could not hear, could not understand still.

I think Dr. Mrowzik, we have found the highest dose endurable........

 "One does not simply walk into Mordor. Its black gates are guarded by more than just orcs. There is evil there that does not sleep, and the Great Eye is ever watchful. It is a barren wasteland, riddled with fire and ash and dust, the very air you breathe is a poisonous fume."

I still feel poisoned today, and see little fires of sulpha burning yet.  I look in the mirror and see shadows of Gollum looking back at me.

We think we have found that when one walks through Mordor, one must take along others.  We are so grateful for those that are emailing, texting, praying and praying and praying trying to help us keep one foot in the world of normalcy while we do battle with a beast.  We need one ear in the world that is not in the world of chaos - we need someone whispering in it all along. 

There is a place under the radar, in the midst of Mordor that you wonder if you will ever climb out again.  It is a cold and lonely place.  For those standing close by, keep whispering.  

********
 
I don't know how much you want to know........