Goodnight Sweet Weekend, Good Morning Chemo Week #7

It is a cold windy Sunday night and I have been wearing the sweatpants I woke up in all day.  Today was the perfect Lazypalooza.  My husband turned our guest room into a walk in closet for me and so I spent the day in sweatpants arranging my sweaters by color and talking to my shoes as Bean read and colored, snuggled next to my boots. 

As I sit here noncommittally watching “The Boxcar Children” with my family, I am beginning to feel as if my head is going to explode…'Girl Interrupted' style.  I feel as if I have an angel on one shoulder giving me a pep talk about how Chemo Monday will not be that bad and about how I can endure anything for 6 short days and then there is the devil on my other shoulder making me quake with dread.

 I do not want to spend 6 hours in a recliner getting chemo drunk.  I do not want to wear a fanny pack for 44 hours as a tiny box pumps chemo into my blood at 2 minute intervals.  I do not want everything that touches my mouth to taste so badly that I simply give up eating or drinking for the next 5 days. Most of all I do not want to miss 'parent night' at my daughters’ ballet class.

Every week, my Bean walks into her class and the door is shut behind her and the blinds are drawn.  This makes sense, it is an attempt to keep parents like me from leaving nose prints on the glass as we try to record the cuteness of our offspring, at just the right angle, apparently disrupting the entire class.  Wednesday is parent night.  Wednesday, they are opening the door and letting us stalker parental units into the room, armed with our Iphones and video cameras.  They are giving us a chance to capture the heaven that is a 4 year old in a tutu and ballet slippers at whatever angle we choose.

Wednesday is also Day 3 of chemo. 

When class starts, I will have been unplugged from my chemo pump for 5 hours and I will be tired, barely lift my head off of the pillow tired. Last chemo Day 3, I slept for 20+ hours.  I have made arrangements.  Grandma is picking up Bean and taking her to class.  My dear husband is going to relax with me (probably watching TV as I sleep beside him).  So here I sit, with every minute that goes by, I become more and more determined to go and more agitated at the thought of enduring this next week.

I am trying to channel my inner Dalai Lama, my inner quiet Zen Monkey, until I remember that I am not Zen.  I do not sit quietly, I do not get Zen.  I am like a bull in a china shop, every waking moment. I promised my husband that this weekend would be lazy and quiet and then we remodeled a room, and I spent the afternoon cooking for the upcoming week. That IS my idea of Lazy. 

I do not sit still and I am not going to let this upcoming week ruin tonight.  I am going to read my little Bean a few extra bedtime stories, I am going to have a glass of wine and I will face tomorrow…tomorrow, like a bull in a china shop. 

I will make parent night…I may sleep  in my car until they open the door but I will be there,  armed with my Iphone and video camera and I will capture every freakin minute and then I will take a nap.