The truth is, that is a very hard question to answer. Because some days are just peaches-n-cream! However, there are gobs of days I feel like a blob. Ok, 99% of days I feel like a jello mold. It's as if my body has completely transformed itself into Jabba the Hut. I walk up a flight of stairs and I am tired. I move like a two-toed sloth, forget everything, and if I have a glass or two of the Pino-Greezjh, pull out your hide-a-bed, because I will be taking an immediate "nap." Basically I now have the alcohol tolerance of the high school valedictorian in her first week of college. It's like I have time traveled to 1992 and I'm a wasted teenage girl off a couple of Bartles and James wine coolers. Just from one glass of mama's happy juice. Compliments of Prozac and a daily dose of mama's little yella pills--the hormone blocking medication I am on for at least ten more years. Hopefully.
I say "hopefully" because I still want to be alive and kicking in ten years! And these li'l yellow pills are making another decade possible. So whenever anyone says, "But you're all good now, right?" I have a million different ways to answer that question. But in the wise words of country songsmith Ronnie Milsap, "Nobody wants a sad song." So I try to take a clue from Mr. Milsap and refrain from babbling on about what ails me and how life after cancer has changed everything. I mean Every. THANG. So if you have run out of kitten videos to watch on Youtube and need to kill some time, I present to you an unedited list of how everything is going....Oh, and here is that Ronnie Milsap song you're singing in your head now. Nobody Wants a Sad Song
Here is a sampling of the million different ways I could answer when anyone asks me how I am doing.
* My body hurts. My joints, my hips, my feet, my hands and especially my chest.
* Whenever something new starts to ache, I think "Oh Snap. It's back." But probably it is just because I am 40. Anxiety out the wazoo. Hence the prescribed Prozac.
* Ok fine, you caught me, I'm 41.
* My hands have swelled so much and I have put on so much weight that my wedding rings no longer fit. Not even on my pinky. And daggum, these sausage fingers were meant to show off that sparkler Clay paid two months of his salary for.
* Once twelve noon hits, my body feels like I just OD'ed on ZZZquil. I'm ready to crumple. But I think I do a pretty good job of hiding my utter exhaustion.
* I catch myself being a total b***h. A lot. Thanks little yella pills. Sorry Clay.
* And those same yeller tablets make me grow a white fuzz beard. That I have to scrape off using special pastel lady face shavers disguised as eyebrow groomers.
* Even though I take those yellow drugs to stop my womanly hormones, I still have to get injections in my stomach --with a needle the size of a crochet hook-- to make sure no estrogen makes an escape into my Jabba the Hut like body. I have little scars all over my six pack to prove it.
* I could go on and on and on. But my darlings keep asking me to pour them chocolate milk and and help them find really bizarre stuff on Youtube. Like the "Floor is lava" videos.
I know this all sounds like piddly stuff compared to being dead and having the worms crawling in and the worms crawling out and the worms playing pinochle on my snout six feet under. But it's a weird thing, this living and trying to get back to normal business.
Here are some recent photos from my dear friend Miranda Lawson of us "getting back to normal" at my nephew Hank's baptismal party. My little chiclets have grown so much since this cancer razzmatazz started. They were in preschool, kindergarten, and 1st grade in March 2016. Now they are 1st, 2nd, and 3rd graders. All of them losing teeth at the same rate at which they brush them. Caroline said that she doesn't even remember me with long hair anymore....But pretty soon this hair helmet will be back to its long, natural bleach state!
