Round 5 - toxin overload!

Sufi and I head out to the infusion center at 10pm. We are liking the night time treatments because my body naturally wants to sleep.

Before I even got to the infusion center I started to feel nausea. Dinner was good, but there was something else going on.

I did not feel any resistance in going to the treatment center or getting chemo. I'm so emotionally dead these days that I just show up with a 'whatever' within me.

So, I'll back it up a bit. Sometime after round a 4 I could start to feel that I needed a cleanse. I was getting caught in a toxic cycle and could literally feel my body going all heebie geebie on me!

The heebie geebies feel like this: Imagine you are 20 again and in a drunken stupor from a night of heavy partying. You not only flirt with a boy whose name you can not remember, but you kiss him too! And sometime the next morning you wake up to the alcohol still swimming in your blood stream trying to make their way out. You are not quite sober, you are probably still might be drunk, you wish you had vomited the night before and you have a conscience that starts to sneak into your thought pattern: "Ugggh, I flirted with that boy? and I was so drunk I even kissed him? what else did I do/say? Did I insult my best friend? Did I make a fool of myself?" and then your whole body just kinda shivers in disgust - that is the heebie geebies!

And as I told this story to Anna W., she said, "Yeah, and that boy was probably toxic for you the same way the chemo is!"

Yup! she is so right! The chemo is toxic for my body and my body has had ENOUGH toxins! I am SO jonzing for a really good full body cleanse. But no can do. Gotta put more toxins in my body to get healed!! Gotta consciously choose to abuse my body yet another time to heal... BIZARRE!!!

By the time I got to the treatment center the nausea has increased. Before the pre-meds ever go into my system I can hear my body for the first time ever really talking to me, and it is screaming, "GET THESE TOXINS OUT OF ME!" And then I hear: "I WANT THESE TOXNS O.." but the sentence can not be completed because I am now puking up dinner. Just the thought of chemo makes my whole body retch.

There is a medical term for this reaction. Dr. G calls it: anticipatory nausea. I call it: my body is clever and knows it does not want any more toxins!

But what I know to be true is that when I started chemo I was pretty damn clean physically. There were not many toxins in me at all! With the first round of chemo I did not vomit, and took lots of side effect meds. The second round I vomited once, on day 3 and less side effect meds. Then each round the vomiting has been getting closer and closer to the chemo until today, when it was actually happening before the chemo even went into my body. What I believe is that my body is getting more and more toxic and it wants to vomit out the toxins! That seems like a normal reaction to me. It is getting so over filled with the toxins and frustrated that I won't listen to it, that now it is trying to get the toxins out even before they go in!

So, in an effort to get the chemo in, I adopt a different plan. I explain to my body how the chemo does need to go inside in order to kills the cancer. So I had the nurse call Dr. G at 1 in the morning to get me an Ativan so I am knocked unconscious enough to get the toxins into me.

(Dr. G reminds me later that I was ademently apposed to Ativan the first time... I reminded him that I am ademently apposed to taking side effect meds I do not need, and when I need them I have no problem taking them!)

The second part of this negotiation with my body was to then give it permission to vomit, but after the chemo went in. The next morning I had a friend come over to give me a full bag of fluids through an IV so I stay so I could vomit until my heart/body is contented! What a HUGE difference it makes. (That's me hangin' out in Ana Paula's kitchen with a bag of IV fluids hooked up to me and the wall). So, as the IV fluids went in, we chatted... about birth... of course. :)

I looked forward to every time I retched, because I new the toxins were leaving my body! And that felt SO good!

Yes, I can still feel the toxins in me, I have poor posture and I can feel my white blood cells bottom out, but I have taken no other side effect meds this time! (think of all the money I am saving the insurance company... I hope they thank me later ). Nothing for nausea. Nothing for vomiting. Nothing for sleep!

I feel like this recover is much better than the others.

The closer I get to it being over, the more I feel like I am understanding chemo.

reminsing on Round 4

So many people want to know where I have been in my writing of the blog.

Well, what you are feeling about my lack of writing/sharing is the same thing I am going through.

I'm trying to figure out, "Where am I?" "Why have I not written?" "Where are my words?" "Am I feeling well?" "Am I sick?" "Is everything okay?"

While I recover from round 5 I will comment on round 4. This is reflective of how my life goes these days. I no longer live in Chronos time, ("Kronos time is what we live with on a daily basis. It is measured by clocks, hours, minutes, and seconds. It often seems to be more of a nemesis or taskmaster than a friend. There is rarely enough of it, and we feel stressed out as we race the clock to go about our regular activities. Kronos time is what we schedule and make appointments in."*) but rather Kairos Time ( "Kairos time, on the other hand, flows gently -- allowing us to be in the moment. We participate in kairos time, rather than racing to catch up with it. Kairos time may occur during meditation, the creative process, rocking a baby, reading a well written book, and other activities that are personally meaningful to us. One is wholly absorbed in the moment, unhurried and unaware of time passing. These are the moments that nurture our souls."*). I no longer live in straight lines that are predictable, but rather circularly and sometimes backwards. And for some reason time no longer 'flys by' in between the chemo treatments, but rather it feels like long times, and I'm liking it that way.

Round 4 was the toughest one yet.

Before I arrived I had come to terms with the fact that having children may not be the end of the world. In fact, there might be a lot more living I can do without the 24/7 dependency and responsibility of raising a child. I was feeling quite liberated! And as the fight for my eggs left me, I felt my youth slip back in. I've always had a young body on the outside, why would it not be youthful on the inside too? I had gotten to the point where I had made friends with my fear, so there were a whole new range of choices opening up for me.

But as is my pattern, the next gate was presenting itself: Idealism. I am being called to let go of the Idealist within myself - because obviously she is useless, as she could not prevent cancer! :) And, It is true, that my idealist - even with her healthy way of living - creates more separation, hate and judgment that I am assuming responsibility for.

I was offered a fantastic book on the subject, which I do recomend:

Addiction to Perfection: The Still Unravished Bride: A Psychological Study by Marion Woodman.

I'm too disconnect and burned up to get dramatic with my writing about this descent into Chemo Hell. It is more with a slow, disconnected drag that I bring myself to the 11pm shift with Sufi and Just Show Up!

Everyone says "Oh, your half way through.", but for me, it did not matter. I was starting to have an psycho emotional response to one of the drugs in my protocol that created a huge burning sensation in my nose and I could feel that sensation before I even got there. In order to keep showing up there is a disassociation that happens. There is a "lets not go there until we need to go there" mentality. And luckily the brain supports that with the literal loss of short term

memory.


I had an angel of a nurse - whose name I forgot - but I'm glad I have her picture. Sufi and I curled up on my bed to sleep through most of the treatment.

I'm trying to write about the chemo, but as I try to I get nausea. The psycho/emotional response is so strong! It is the same 'yucky' pit-in-my-stomache visceral body response that I have when my unresolved abuse issues get triggered in me.

In my book, Chemo is abusive to the body... and I am allowing it to happen! God, this is really fucked up that I was not able to keep my body safe enough from this physical toxin. And it is also messed up in saying that this poisen will 'cure' me.

Sorry party people, but I'm gonna have to stop writing about chemo. It is literally making me sick.

Lets just say that the nurse was an angel, she change the order of the chemo so I would have less burning in my nose and it worked.

When I arrived back at Rima's I had a good day (the steroids don't wear off until day 2). Then my brother arrived from Hong Kong to enjoy a bit of Halloween on the lawn before we drove off to Malibu to recover together.

I spent a week with my brother and it is the same story, just a different week. By day 2 after I had gotten myself dehydrated (because the voice of heal continues to be a distant echo) I had a raging liver yang headache and heat all over my body. I had to call Anna W over for some emergency acupuncture and hydration.

The next two days I looked forward to vomiting (get those toxins OUT!), shuffled around like a zombie, slept, ate eggs from breakfast, raw yogurt, raw cream, keiffer water, tea and lots of apples and prayed for the poop! My medication intake was minimal, as I'm not wanting to fight the nausea as I know if must be serving a purpose. I figure my body does not want to eat because it has too many god damn toxins in it to eat! So, I'm listening to it. And we watched a bunch of movies.

My brother kept looking at me and saying, "I keep forgetting that you have cancer and just had chemo!"

I forget too sometimes. And it isn't that I'm in denial, it is just that I'm not a victim of the cancer and I'm not sick, it is the chemo that makes me feel like hell!!


* all quotes are from: Close to the Bone by Jean Shinoda Bolen

what to write?

I'm not sure why I don't write as often. Maybe because I forget to, the way I forget almost everything these days. It is called "chemo brain". Maybe I wrote about it already?

I forget words. I loose thoughts. I get distracted on Facebook and forget that I need to send someone an email - oh, wait, that is just normal these days for everyone!

I met a guy a few weeks ago who understands what I am going through. He had a brain tumor straight out of left field, right as his career was taking off too. When he looked at me he immediately gave me a hug, coz he knew. He got it. He understood. (And he also loves raw food!)

He told me the story of how he was a block away from his house in New York and could not find his way home. He was so lost that he had to call a taxi to take him home.

"What they don't tell you is that the brain is made of plasticine and your memory will come back."

He gave me another hug and then said to me seriously, "Be easy on yourself. The best thing you can do is be easy on yourself."

It was at that moment I knew I can't keep working.

I want to be at births, but I can't be relied on. I did the final bit of letting go. I made sure all my doula clients had other doulas as their main doula and I found another midwife to share my 2009 clients with me.

I feel like I am being re-created.

I'd like to know into what I'm being created into, but it looks like I am on a need to know basis, and right now, I don't need to know.

Anyways, if I was told, I'd probably forget.