Living Dead

Since my chemotherapy drugs are busy killing a lot of my good cells in the process of eradicating cancer, the effect is kind of like being half dead. For weeks now, I haven't had a temperature above 97.7 F, and it's been as low as 96.6 F. My skin has a strange thin and smooth feel like a supple saran wrap, and the color is slowly turning to a silver hue, much like my fellow patients in the chemo-room.

My first treatment I came into the chemo-room somwehat excited: young, rosy-cheeked (greasy) and ready to try out the new port-o-catherter device in my chest. For some reason I like being attached to a bag hanging from a pole and slowly dripping things into me. Perhaps it's from my first surgery's intravenous saline drip that kept me hydrated the 2 hours I waited for the surgeon to show up and cut me open.

That I.V. was much more convenient than taking the time to lift a glass or bottle to my lips, pursing them around the vessel, and making the effort to swallow. So when I first saw the vinyl-coated easy chairs lined up next to some I.V. poles, I felt right at home. I chose the one smack in the middle of the room and the end of the hallway, equadistant to the two bathrooms but close to the corner windows, within earshot of the nurses' glassed-in room, and able to peak around at the other patients. I'll be really disappointed to find someone else in my seat come Friday. REALLY disappointed.

I don't think anyone really wants my chair, but we'll see. There are some shady looking characters in there with me. The first time, there was a woman in her 70's and a grey-haired man in his 60's on either side of me, both greyish blue with angular facial features that caught the light. The red scarved woman was fully reclined and motionless as a concrete mannequin. The man moved and smiled when he talked, eerily animated for the half-undead.

Midway through my treatment, a woman in her 40's slowly shuffled in, hunched and hanging painfully on her wheeled walker. She was the greyist and most obviously ill of anyone there, she shrieked horribly when the nurse tried to access her veins. "Owwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww! OWWWwwwwwwwwwwww! You hurt me!" She yelled and slowly succumbed to the gentle drip of the drugs.

I couldn't imagine myself turning this way, into the living dead. I chomped on my little snack bag which slowly started to tasted like oil, salt and talcum powder and flipped through a magazine FULL of healthy, smiling people... ahhh. I saw the grey sheen start to show through the thinning skin of my arm weeks later as the sun shone through the car window. Since then my eyes have sunken in from lack of sleep and my cheeks are decidedly mummy-like, but I promise, if I do nothing else as a positive cancer representative and role model, I'll try not to act so creepy, even if my hats & wigs do scare some of the littler people. Mmmm, I mean, ahhh... people... fresh, plump, healthy, lively people.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2956447426428748010