Every morning, I dry heave into the sink while I’m making coffee.
The morning after I got back from New York, on my way into a 7 hour appointment, I threw up in a snow bank on the walk from the parking lot to the clinic.
At that appointment, they gave me an IV of fluids for dehydration, and a shot of anti nausea meds.
I have sores on the end of my tongue and on my gums.
The rash that I got with my last trial has cleared up, but a new one has started on both hands.
I wake up every two hours to pee. I drink all day feeling dehydrated, but I don’t pee during the day. I pee mostly at night.
My brain sometimes screams in panic as my back gets sore from walking. Has the cancer spread to my bones? Is this it? What does bone cancer feel like?
I pray for wisdom and strength, but I feel my prayers ascend into the ether, unheard, unfelt by God. Why would God care about me, a struggling sinner, when other, bigger things warrant his attention? Who am I to beg and grovel at his feet, asking for relief from my meager pain and suffering?
I have weird, and sometimes very disturbing dreams. Last night, I had one where I was working at a factory, but the people were really mean and were trying to make me quit by throwing rice in the toilets and saying I did it and I needed to be fired.
And then the factory sank into the ground under a huge slow turning gear and flooded with oil.
I had a dream about making the Red Wings hockey team. As I tried to explain to Stevie Y that I couldn’t play hockey, he got mad at me for not having enough confidence in myself and he didn’t want to hear it. I spent the rest of the dream desperately scrambling to get off the ice.
In my dreams, I’ve had conversations with my mother, my father in law, and Frank Miller, an old friend I haven’t seen in 30 years. They’re all dead.
When I woke up this morning, this poem was running through my head, over and over.
Always remember,
You’re just there to pay the rent.
Because in the end,
You’re a science experiment.
Fishrocks 