Color in your cheeks

Your sister walks in (6 ft radius!), and you obviously haven't done much besides take a shower that day.  "Wow! You look better."

"Um, liar."

"No, really, there is color in your cheeks. You don't look as. . . pale."

"Wan?"

"What is Wan?"

"Really pale."

From m-w.com:

¹wan

 adj \ˈwän\

1

a : suggestive of poor health : sickly, pallidb : lacking vitality : feeble

"Well, you were looking nearly dead for a while there."

"I kind of noticed." 

"But you are looking better, now!"

"Kind of like a person?"

"Kind of like a person."

And that, my friends, is what a couple days of thyroid meds will do for you.  Let you sleep, and make you feel kind of like a person. 

Thanks for all the help so far, friends and family! We've got three more months until I am at full person status, but kind-of-like-a-person status has been achieved (and thank you so much to J.B.L. for a chocolate shake and fries on Saturday night, that was the highlight of my weekend).  

Funny things you notice late at night

You are too tired to lift an eating utensil. Eating has become a chore you need to do, but not that you want. However, as you scarf down a bowl of fruit your sister has brought up to your door, you realize it is the best thing you've tasted in forever, and that you are, in fact, hungry. Sadly, you have to rest for a while between bites because you really are that tired.

 You start to wonder if this is really some kind of hazing ritual, and you don't really have cancer--they just want to see how long you can hold out with a quarantine of 6 ft. and severe hypothyroidism.


You are too tired to read or even watch tv, but your body aches so you cannot actually sleep. You don't want to talk to anyone as your moods flail wildly and your tears would be extra radioactive, so they rather you don't cry if you can help it. Also, talking requires energy, and you don't have any.

You are back in the bath, praying for the thyroid meds you get tomorrow, and again wondering when the bathroom clock stopped at 9:43 and you've missed it for how long now?

And you kind of wish not to feel your left foot again like it was after surgery, as it is the one that won't stop throbbing and let you sleep. You are stuck playing Draw Something with random strangers as it is all you have left--that or dominoes because endless counting to fives is easy...

 Is it morning yet?

Freezing and almost radiant

After sitting in a tube in the most uncomfortable position for over an hour (and feeling like they have dislocated your arms), you are moved into a room, where there is the most random list of magazines and no blankets. Despite the fact that everyone in the hospital should hear your teeth chattering, you sit shivering by yourself taking "grounding breaths" to keep yourself calm. And you haven't even gone radioactive (well, completely) yet...

As someone who doesn't normally get cold, it is really upsetting to be cold deep into your bones. When you finally beg for a blanket, the heated one they bring to you has to feel like what heaven is--nestled in love and warmth, and grateful to not just feel sterile cold around you--that smells off...

The guys working on the ducts make so much noise you rethink every time you've rolled your eyes at spy movies where the protagonist crawls through huge air vents. It sounds like there is a small pygmie village in the walls.

Despite trying to keep a good attitude, you've been frozen, contorted, startled, ignored, and ordered about for four hours, and it is starting to wear thin. And despite calming music playing on a loop, being in the basement is killing your battery life, and all you want is for them to come check your license, so you can drink down a large radioactive dose of iodine.

Side note: magazines called Bird and Bloom and Opera Digest are real things! Gas Engine magazine has a gorgeous masthead.

And you finally drink down your dose, so a nice tech named Mike can tell you it is so late today, you have to wait two more hours before drinking anything (or eating) despite the fact that you haven't really eaten most of yesterday and all of today, and then the doctor tells you you have to wait yet another day for cheese, and oddly that is the point where you want to scream that it is all too much and you cannot take it anymore!

But you let Mike the tech run you over with a Geiger counter and "escort you from the premises," and it is all over, at least until next Wednesday when you have to do it again.

Sigh... I wish I weren't so cold--hospitals should stock complimentary snuggies.

Becoming Radiant

So they have to do one more blood test and I have to wait for an hour... Fasting, of course.

So, I need some help y'all. Peter Parker is Spiderman (radioactive spider bite); Bruce Banner is the Hulk (Gamma rays); and the X-men have fun names (genetic mutation), so as I will shortly have radioactive blood, I need a Superhero name. Please throw all ideas in the comments, and we'll vote this week during quarantine...

Home Stretch

Radiation and Quarantine this coming week.  I've gone dairy free (among other things) since April 16, and I miss cheese the most. I have even read about making cheese at home, and may even make squeaky cheese!  I'm getting ready to radiation proof the house, and figuring out my life post severe hypothyroid and stupid, funky diet.

I have learned cool things like, I hate veggies, except a very minor few, and I can only eat so much oatmeal.  I have learned how to make roasted red peppers (and will never buy them again!).  I have a go-to spaghetti recipe--which I had worked on ages ago, but have really never written down, now, the base is written down, and what you do to it can be played with (gluten free pasta is made without eggs).  Turns out I am okay with hard boiled eggs, though throwing away the yolks makes me feel sick.  They put sea salt in nearly all milk substitutes (except coconut milk beverage), and I really like cheese.  Like, I've dreamed of cheese, all different kinds.  I've looked up recipes for cheesy things (and meaty things), restaurants that have had amazing cheesy foods that have closed in my area but may still be open elsewhere, so I can get them--and cannot wait to make the torte from Felicia Day's flog episode 3--it looks divine (I kind of want her apron)! I am grouchy when I am hungry, but I don't like to eat things unless they are really good.  By the way, I have never really liked fries unless drowned in sauces, and now, I can make my own with paprika, garlic powder, and dill.

My kitchen needs cleaning (because when you have to cook all your own foods, you make a mess), especially when you are super exhausted all the time. KSB has been a dream, and hooked me up with bread and peeled and cut potatoes for oven fries for two weeks, and if anyone was going to be changed in a twinkling, it is she. Kale smoothies, y'all, and flatbread, and hummus, and she is amazing!

I am bloated, a little depressed, and achy, but I am hanging in there.  I am so glad to be able to take thyroid meds starting on Thursday (and for CS to bring me a cheesy, cheesy pizza! and BL to be a doll and bring me Red Robin!--at first, I thought on the same day, and now I am not sure. . . ).  Supposedly, I will be really, really tired, so I am making a pile of books I've been meaning to read, but may or may not get to them, and am thinking Alias/West Wing marathons while half awake. Though there will be some Dr. Mario and maybe some other marathoning (Buffy, Veronica Mars, Farscape, Lark Rise to Candleford, Witchblade, and Lost have all waved their hands in the air, as well as the lead up to the Avengers--Thor, Captain America, Iron Man 1&2, and you know I can do Jane Austen marathons for weeks on end).

It has been so long since I felt like a person, I am just looking forward to feeling like I am not waiting around for doctors to fix me.  And to engage in my life again (which you need energy for--Thursday cannot get here fast enough).  Though supposedly it will take me three months of figuring out my meds to get to fully functioning.  My therapist has been a dream through all this, and if you are going through cancer treatments, I would recommend therapy to everyone--if only to talk me down off the ledge when I wanted to chuck it all. 

Cancer free by the end of May, y'all! Hopefully.

On a complete side note, if you are around on June 9th, I have a gig singing at Bocci (well, technically in the courtyard) with my favorite little local jazz band. Patti, their normal singer, who does the most gorgeous version of La Vie en Rose I've ever heard, cannot sing that night, so I am going to be their vocalist. I just got the intimidating set list of 33 songs, and I am a little nervous, but SUPER excited. I'll post more closer to time, but 6:30pm on free cake night at Nantucket?  Easy peasy! 

Funny enough, one of my favorite recovery moments was singing for an hour at a wine tasting with John K--the amazing jazz guitarist from this group.  So fun!

Anyway, I know this is super meandering.  Just thank you for your help and prayers, and I figured it was time to update everyone again. 

Time to go make coconut milk, egg white, french toast. . .   I may need to buy a bread maker after this.

Broadway Baby, updates. . .

So Smash has been less than impressive, and is definitely for adults only, but the songs still make me smile.  Maybe I just want to be in a production. Vertigo, laryngitis, and everything. . .



The Workshop--sort of


A little more of the Workshop. . .



All why I would want to see this staged! :)

Here is the show I saw last night.


Ans this is the one I want to see this summer (though that will be in the Park with Amy Adams and Donna Murphy!



Good Christian Belles, though also adult only, also brings the musical laughs:



The Best ones from La Cheno recently--though she brings it every time. . .




I especially love an early one where she dedicated Jesus Take the Wheel to the widow of a man who died in a car crash. . . Horribly blasphemous, but really funny.

Side note: I am doing a gig soon--hold your calendar for June 9 at Bocci.  The TeaCups usual vocalist is busy, so they are getting a particular, soon-to-be-cancer-free, stand-in. Maybe I should get a hat. . . I'll need to talk to Roulette's Kara! :)

Home

I've been jamming on the Civil Wars for some time now--when TV and reading makes you dizzy, the only thing you have left is randomly dancing (and not falling to the left) to various tunes. So, of course their Pandora Station (with some Weepies added), have made for delightful listening. This one makes me smile whenever I hear it.  So, get up and dance along.



And a little Florence. . .