"Been there, done that and have the T shirt to prove it..."

Yesterday was bad. Getting out of my La-Z-Bum chair to do anything winded me. My brain was fuddled.

I was supposed to go to work. After work, the spouse and I were supposed to go to Chiang's Gourmet for our 18th wedding anniversary. Neither happened.

I started feeling the creeping cruds on Sunday afternoon. By yesterday morning, they were in full blossom and stayed with me until the evening. The spouse went to Chiang's to get our dinners to-go, I crawled to the couch, and we ate our celebratory dinners while watching an old Lovejoy, a British television series that requires absolutely no brain or physical stamina.

Then sleep, sleep, sleep.

There's nothing I can do about this. I can't overcome it. I can't rally internal resources and ignore the chemo side effects. I can't do work. All I can do is sit or lay and feel/look/smell sickly.

Today is a little better, but not much. At least today, I can write.

I'm impressed with the chemo punch.

*******

A few days ago I cast a wider net among my artist friends, asking them if any would be interested in doing a henna tattoo on my head.

One artist whose work I've admired a long time wrote back to tell me he'd been through this. "Been there, done that and have the T shirt to prove it..." he says.

He added "No one really understands the effects of the treatments until they experience them. It simply defies verbalizing."

He's right, and I've tried repeatedly to put down in words what escapes accurately articulating.

It helps, believe it or not, knowing others who have gone through it and come out the other side relatively intact.

Intact, my friend says, but changed.