The Euros run more juice through their sockets, right?

No matter. Fact checking is for sissies (as they say on The Report).

The latest word from the good doctor is “wait,” as in, “we’re going to have to wait before we send you home.”

Here’s a few more words he used: “next,” “week,” “uncomfortable,” and the ever popular “estimating” (when used in conjunction with “uncomfortable”).

I don’t feel it’s appropriate for me to discuss how I’ve been feeling, owing to it’s graphic nature; but I’m perfectly willing to toss around some euphemisms, if that will satisfy any latent curiosity floating around. For example: my food processor has been having problems north and south of the border. What would otherwise be normal deposits at the nearby collection center feel like the battery is somehow leaking into the exhaust. And there’s a wild, half clean animal all wound up and skulking around as if he were chained down in a cage during mating season.

Like everything else, it could all be much worse. Tomorrow I can look forward to tooling around with the Reunion software upgrade I bought this evening.

Here’s to life’s simple pleasures.

The truly good news is that the chemo is done. It hasn’t quite finished having it’s way with my body’s rapidly reproducing cells, but the corner is nigh! Shots of Neupogen have begun, to try to boost the production of my white blood cells (they tell me a count of 200 is low). And, I learned a new word today: Thrush. (Truth be told, I had heard of a bird referred to as a “Thrush.”) In this case, Thrush is a fungual infection in a person’s mouth, made possible due to immunosuppression. There’s another place this fungal infection can attack (in the non-immunosuppressed), but I have a few sensibilities, and I don’t want to discuss it.

So there!

The other day, one of those “other days” which are now relegated to the blur of my defensive mind, I was exceedingly nauseous. I was having chills, my back was spasming, and I wanted relief. The good natured nurse came in to play twenty questions (she lost by the way), and I got her back out the door to fetch me the appropriate pharmaceutical relief. That relief came in the form of two magical pills – swallowed, not implanted. The nurse helpfully suggested that I nibble on some crackers first, so that I wouldn’t vomit up the pills. Unfortunately for me, these were the first saltine crackers I’ve had the occasion to label: damn near uneatable.

Anyway, the pills arrived and I geared up for 20 minutes of war with the reflexive nature of reverse peristalsis. I swallowed the pills and 90 seconds later all hell broke lose, subjectively speaking. In the next five minutes I couldn’t have held down a sleeping dog. It was all coming up until it all came; then for good measure, my body kept trying for another few minutes.

So I’m sitting on the edge of my bed, cradling my vomit pan in a two handed manner suggesting I had recently taken up a far eastern religion, when my nurse returned.

“Well good news, It doesn’t look like you vomited up the pills.”

“…” I replied.

“So we won’t have to take them again.” She added.

“Uuuuhhh,” I replied.

“Is there anything else I can get you right now?”

“Uuuuhh, sheets?” I asked.

“Oh yeah, I can do that.”

So it occurs to me, what the fuck? Twice over in fact.

First, how the hell did I keep down two pills I’d JUST swallowed when I’d barely been able to keep down my lower intestines. And Second, I was dripping in unmentionables… surely the need for clean sheets went without saying. I should have done some follow-up on the pill issue, but fatigue won the day.

Cheryl will tell you it’s another example of my not sticking up for myself, and she may have a point. But sometimes I think I have a pretty keen sense of momentum (the kind referred to in sports and pop-psychology – not as described by Newton), and in this case momentum was SO not on my side this day.