At the end of civilization, all that will be left are rats and cockroaches. That’s pretty much how I feel about anything growing on my body at this point. Most all hair is gone, but anything remaining isn’t ideal. My head is covered in an alarming white fuzz. My eyebrows consist of the half dozen long, unruly grampa eyebrow hairs that I would normally have plucked, but now I slick down into a rough eyebrow shape. If I comb them straight up, they cover half my forehead. It’s not good, but they’re all I’ve got.
It's now over four weeks since my fourth (and final) chemo infusion. My ankles started swelling up last week, and my stamina was getting worse, not better. My oncologist informed me that some of the magical chemo side effects (swelling, exhaustion) of the more toxic drug (Taxotere) don’t kick in until now, and will wear off -- in about three months. About the time I have visible hair, I should be feeling great. My doctor stressed the importance of keeping active and pushing through the tiredness, which Bob has interpreted as his time to clock out as my personal chef, waiter and sherpa.
Meanwhile, things are crumbling around us. The squirrel/roof/solar panel situation is still not handled. My access to legal abortion is dwindling. Now that chemo has put me into menopause, I guess my chances of needing one are extremely slim. Time to take that off the bucket list. My 78-year-old father broke his leg. He has a workshop out by the cabins, and he comes up with some excuse to go to his shop most days. He was tilling up an area to plant a food plot for the deer and turkeys, and his tiller seemed to need servicing. He used two skids to roll the tiller up into the back of his pickup, then attempted to walk down one of the planks – which would have been great had it not slipped, dumping him in the gravel. He was able to heroically crawl around to his phone in the cab of his truck, and the ambulance eventually found him even through the driveway to the shop doesn’t have an address and isn’t marked. He now has a new knee – he smashed the tops of his tibia and fibula and the surgical fix seemed to warrant a bonus new knee. He’s practically bionic now; he already had two new hips. He’s anxious to get out of rehab so he can try to walk the plank again, and succeed.
Now that it’s warm out, I refuse to wear a hat on my white fuzzy head. It’s not my job to protect the public from all this. Visiting my dad in the hospital, I was confused when people tried to give ME a wheelchair.