Well, the itchy hands thing has come back. I went to see my doc (who wound up as one of the top doctors in the nation according to a recent US News & World Report article) and he said it’s not related to the Hodgkin’s. He said I’ve been doing so amazingly well and the nodes have shrunk so much, that there’s just no way the cancer could be doing this.
On one hand (so to speak), I’m relieved. If this was caused by the Hodgkin’s, that would mean I was relapsing while being treated and that’s a very bad thing. On the other hand, that means we’re back to no name for the hand thing. Great. One thing about it though, I don’t think I had the same hives/lesions/bumps/itchy-itchy-bitchies on the rest of my body that I do on my hands. Hopefully that means I won’t start to itch elsewhere.
I had a realization about chemo today on the way to my treatment. That realization is, I don’t like it. Not at all. I decided it’s like this. Think of the person you hate most in life, whether real (your sister, your homeroom teacher, that guy who just cut you off) or one of those imaginary talking heads on TV (the President, Robert Novak, Elmo, David Byrne). Now imagine that person saved you from falling off a cliff. Maybe jumped in front of a bullet meant for you. Whatever. Do you suddenly love that person? Like that person? Hell no!
Saving someone’s life does not redeem you in that person’s eyes. Regardless of the fact that you’re alive by the grace of the person you hate, that person still has the same traits that made you hate them in the first place. You may feel indebted to them or thankful that they were there to help, but you still hate them.
That’s chemo for me. My chemo is… I was about to say my chemo is Robert Novak, but then I realized that would mean I’m getting injected with him every couple of weeks. Eeeewww… My chemo is really hot pizza that burns the roof of your mouth. No, that’s not quite right either. Let’s just say this:
I hate my chemo.