Smiling

I'm emerging from the depths of chemotherapy at last.  I started the day with a walk, during which I marveled at the blue skies, chirping birds, and frozen fractals on the ground.  Then I was spent and needed a rest, but look how quickly I rebounded!  Already I have energy for typing, whereas yesterday I would have slept for two hours to recharge.  My fingers are moving faster than yesterday.  If only I could figure out how to stabilize my guts, then I'll have this situation under control.

One hard chemo down.  Done.  Past.  Complete.

Yesterday was a hard day, so to combat it I took matters into my own hands.  Instead of being afraid of dying of cancer, or of feeling sick forever, or of my hair falling out, I gutted the fear with the blunt blades of childrens' scissors.  My daughters wielded the scissors.  My brother made the video (with a little help from Google's Auto Awesome).

After the haircut Ian buzzed my whole head for me.  Now I'm ready.  Let's do this.

Let's make this a multi-media blog post all around with another reason that I'm smiling today.  Every day, someone has to flush my Picc line for me.  The picc line deserves its own post and explanation, but here is the situation in brief:  it is a long (50 cm?) internal tube that threads up my arm and into a big vein.  An external portion is taped to my skin on the underside of my right arm, just above my elbow.  The external portion has a button in it, and through this button folks can get blood out or put medicine in.  Ten mls of sterile saline needs to be injected into the button every day that the picc line is not being used for something else.  I can't do it myself because I only have one hand that can reach it.

Enter my brother (the OC).  He has been flushing my picc line for me every day, and today it came to light that he enjoys doing it.  He said he's always wanted to do something like this, ever since that scene in Con Air when Nick Cage has to inject his own heart in order to save everyone.  OMG, I was dying laughing!  First of all, that movie came out like a million years ago; secondly, imagining Nick Cage flushing my picc line to save lives is hilarious; thirdly, wasn't it actually The Rock, NOT Con Air?  But what's the difference, right?  LMAO.  Ryan couldn't find the precise clip on YouTube, but here is a scene from The Rock that explains the situation.  Trigger alert:  terrible language, stressful situation.

That's all for now.  I need to go find more crackers.  :)