This is my foot. This is my foot on Sorafenib. This is called hand foot syndrome. Toxicity to the drug has built up, and causes the capillaries in the extremities to burst. It feels like huge hot spots. Then it feels like you’re walking on feet where the skin in a wee bit loose and you’re sliding around in your own feet. Then it seems to be callousing up. Good times. These little piggies are not doing to the market today. Pedicure anyone?
This past Sunday, Mim died. Mim was my wife’s grandmother. She was lovely. For 3 of the past 4 years, during the time between Thanksgiving and New Years, wifey has had a death in her immediate family. Next year, we are staying home, wrapped in bubblewrap, and “opting out” of the holidays. It has been a tough fall.
When I first met Mim, she was as nice and as warm as someone could be. I have never met a soul who did not mention those same thoughts when thinking back on Mim. She accepted me into the family, no qualms, and even gave me some “Mim Money” once in a while. A sure sign that you have been accepted!
About 5 years ago, it became very apparent that Mim was having problems with memory, with recognition. She lived with her husband, Pip, in the house they had lived in for over 40 years. He cared for her, perhaps stubbornly, until he died 2 years ago. She had Alzheimers. After Pip’s death, she lived at a home that had a “memory ward” and they provided a safe, unchanging place for her to be.
I used to think how it would be for Pip and Mim, living in the same house, married for decades, and then one starts to not recognize the other. I want to think that the slide into “not knowing” isn’t necessarily unpleasant for the one sliding. I think it is probably worse for us, watching her slide away. Anyway, I wrote a poem, of sorts, about Mim wandering around her house and bumping into Pip, but not recognizing him:
I was here just a second ago…
did you see me?
I stopped by it seems, completely by surprise,
even to me.
Wandering, as I do, it was so nice to see
a familiar face..
Was it recently we met?
I noticed you are married!
Details, you see, sometimes just jump
out at me.
Lovely, marriage, like a blanket against
a winter chill.
So cold have I been, so chilled by
this winter.
I think that is why I was wandering,
shaking my bones to keep warm.
And how lovely, and how warm, it was,
to see you.
In any event. I hope she is with Pip now, and they are reliving it all, one detail at a time.
Ok, Ok, Ok…. I GET IT!!! The hot flashes have officially commenced. I thought on one particular day that I was experiencing a “warm flutter”…. but, I was also getting ready to do some cyber monday shopping… so, it could have been the warm flutter of a hard won haggle afoot. But no, it was not getting 73% off that must have “all-in-one” dog groomer that gave me that warm tingly feeling… it was….. (insert dramatic music)…. MENOPAUSE!!! (in my mind…. young children and old men run screaming from the room). I got into a dispute with my wifey over the thermostat… INSISTING that she had ‘ONCE MORE TURNED UP THE HEAT TO UNBEARABLE LEVELS!!!!” Wifey told me to “shut my piehole, you are having a hot flash.” It may have been the bright red blotchy cheeks and chest, along with the dampened forehead that gave it away. I have also noticed another side effect. This one is the one that is best talked about over wine and beer. Go ahead… I’ll wait until you are properly in a “7 year old” frame of mind to talk about it…. Really…. a few beers and some wine, and you’ll be able to appreciate the PURE GENIUS of the chemists in scheming this particular side effect when they developed this wunderdrug… I imagine that these brilliant chemists all sit around in a pub, celebrating the newest life saving drug, all done, with no side effects, and these chemists are just drinking and making stupid “double helix” jokes, or whatever those eggheads joke about… and then one chemist looks at another and goes…. you know what would be even funnier than “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the precipitate!” (get it??? i didn’t either the first time…. stupid chemists!!!)… and then other chemist looks back droopy eyed and the first chemist says… lets add something fun to our new drug!!!! And they all laugh and think how clever they are… and then one says:
Two atoms are walking down the street.
Says one atom to the other, “Hey! I think I lost an electron!”
The other says, “Are you sure??”
“Yes, I’m positive!”
Then…. back in the lab they run… all drunked up and stir up a “more fun” batch of the life saving drug… and now I have flatulence. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!! GOOD ONE!!!!! Fucking chemists.
cancerrant 