Zzzzzzzz....

Whoa.  WHOA.  WHOOOOOAAAAA!!!!!

Okay, apparently the drug is working so bloody well, that they are taking me off of it for four days while they figure out the next best thing.

Hopefully, since I'm responding well, it will be a much lower dosage as I am beginning to feel like an extra in Night of The Living Dead.  I wander around in a "Did I Leave the Oven On?" fog... forgetting what I'm saying in the middle of a sentence and basically wanting to lie down while driving.  Frowned upon, on most roadways.

The show that I am directing seems to be going well, which is a colossal relief, as I haven't done this before and I'm enjoying it.  Being "IN CHARGE" is an odd mind set for me, as I have always been an Indian rather than a Chief, but I think I might like it.  God... I can certainly pontificate when I need to make a point.

I'm going back to the theatre to begin and finish the season until late December, so paychecks and the applause that I whore for will return to my rafters.

Cancer World!!!! The Theme Park No One Wants to Go To

Yesterday, I spent the morning being siphoned and then the afternoon driving two hours to a "CANCER CENTER" two hours away to be siphoned AGAIN, then herded through endless examination rooms, hallways within hallways, into another windowless room, to be dealt with by caaaaaring nurses.  And finally an Oncologist who gives me more news--luckily good, that I am responding to treatment like a love letter to this new drug.  I was VERY relieved, but this is still only five weeks in, so I reserve the right to allow joy to come to the dance

Needless to say, I am happy and grateful.
I know others are going through so much more, but there is such a feeling of US and THEM in a doctor's office when dealing with disease. As if I'm being examined behind bars.  I can't help but make the gap lessen by saying something completely irreverent to make the Nurse/Phlebotomist gasp, or at least laugh.  Throwing someone off guard while they are holding needles is probably less than wise, but certainly a way to be thought of as a sentient entity, rather than a test tube.

I just have this trigger about being a number.  I insist on being a person in the damned room.  I realize that this is probably how they are seeing me, but the inner rebel-without-a-clue can't help it and out comes the rubber chicken.  Wacka wacka... (Michele Ragusa, this is all your fault :)  )

On the way home, I stopped in a one horse town at a Golden Corral and gorged--as I hadn't eaten in hours and despite the constant weight loss connected to this disease, I can't help a trough when the moment arrives.
TRULY a lesson in what I don't want to be, yet a strange feeling that I am with my people.
Southerners fresh from church in their polyester skirts complimented by their equally rayon doctrines... Acutely obese children begging their mothers for more yellow "vegetables".  I look at them with a strange aversion and recognition.  These are my people... that I DO NOT want to be like.  I will inwardly judge them, but become enraged if anyone outside my ken casts a disparaging eye their way.
Difficult to explain and I'm not exactly proud of it, but maybe Margaret Mead would understand!

Home to begin direction of a show at Connemara with our new Apprentices--that fill me with such pride and desire to do right by them.  Art mirrored by life complicated by mortality.

Time for some more wine, I think.

Brief.... almost Haiku-esque

I literally am becoming a Platinum Magnolia (equally durable, but FAAAR more expensive).
A local deli has asked me to bake and supply them with pastries, and I really love this place, so it's no problem.

In one week I'm directing a show.

In two weeks I'm rehearsing for one... all the while gardening, stirring and SURVIVING.
Take that, warped chromasomes!

Normalcy, Tartes and The Weekly Leeching

Good news today from Leech Land.
When last bled, my white count, hemaglobin and platelets--not to mention my EKG were all in the land of Normal.
This is, as you may have guessed, reasons to break out the Martini shaker... metaphorically speaking, of course.
As I still feel fine... actually better than fine as I am neither anemic--nor have a white count that is higher than the Troposphere, this is all still a bit surreal.  I know I have it, but it certainly does not have me.

In food land, I sold a Tarte Tatin I made in my own kitchen to my favourite little deli in town.
Tarts... Now if only I could make Vicars...

Brief

Had lunch with a good friend from Abingdon today.
Still fighting fatigue... but fighting it with a Martini.  If I'm going to be tired, there will bloody well be something langourously Noel Coward about the whole thing.  Camille I am not.

Watching a BBC 4 series from 2001 called Manor House.  21 or so people recreate life in an Edwardian manor house in 1906.  It's certainly clear why this era didn't last.. although I really love the style.

Fatiiiiiiigue

Cooked a dinner for friends last night who are dealing with similar travails. 
Salad with mixed local greens/veggies and a champagne/honey vinaigrette.  Brined roast chicken, riced garlic potatoes, deep fried okra (in the new deep fryer) and locally grown berries and cream for dessert.

Felt decent yesterday... more than likely due to a drop in the white cells and a shrinking spleen.  Amazing to know that I was gradually getting more ill over the years and just powered through it.
Ah well.

Now... today... Fatigue hit around 6 pm like a rogue wave.  Decided to actually pay attention to it and stay out of the garden.

Yes... The New Normal, indeed.

Clear, Please...

I had my first meeting with my Oncologist (there's a sentence I never thought I'd say) today--after a full week on chemo and after I had my blood checked.  The great news is that my white cells--which rang the carnival strong man test bell at 280,000, has decreased to 11,000.  Hemoglobin and platelets all good and other news is that I feel better.  Having been a ballet dancer for almost half my life, my pain tolerance is rather high, so my "I feel like crap-ometer" tends to be a bit different than most mortals...
Ironic, when I have to take chemotherapy every bloody day.

I alsospoke with her about the possibility of bone marrow transfusion as a pre-emptive strike to cure the damned thing and will see a doctor at Levine Cancer Center in Charlotte (a nice Jewish hospital.  Thank G-D!  The least best thing is that there will be magazines that are of this decade and I won't get a nice dose of White Jesus in the waiting room.  No offense, but the white-washing of the Christian Messiah has always made me laugh a bit.  I'm not religious, but I am kind of historically aware...
Aaaaaanyway...

I digress...
Taking inspiration from a dear friend who navigated Stage 3C breast cancer, a mastectomy, lymphectomy, radical IV chemo and radiation--every time I feel fatigued, I get off my ass (which now weighs the same as it did when I played the lead in the musical; Crazy For You (although gravity and geometry have moved things about a bit)), and go outside and garden.

Clearly, my front yard is a wee bit altered...

I call it the "Get Off My Dress, Cancer" Garden.

So... here's hoping that this trend continues...
Having friends over this evening for a VERY Southern dinner.
Organic Greens with a Champagne/Honey vinaigrette
Roast chicken (of course I brined it first...)
Fried Okra in WHITE cornmeal (that is the key)
Riced mashed potatoes
Locally grown berries and cream

The Get Off My Dress, Cancer... DINNER....

The saga continues, dolls...

Get On With It...

Massive fatigue today.

As in the kind where you are very aware of the placement your bones in your body because they are tired, tired, TIRED.  Rather inconvenient when you're catering a party in a private home--carrying china and Depression Glass.

See, sprawling in a heap would just be ...unseemly.  And going fetal in the butler's pantry would more than likely affect business, so just get over it (I tell myself) and put the berries on top of the cream, smile, pour the wine, the water, the Mimosas and get through it.  My friend who owns the company and works with me is a fellow New Yorker as well as a cancer survivor and the shared knowing looks turn us in to war buddies.

Come home and sit down and stare at the wall until consciousness alters, then get off your ass and go outside with Dawg.

I began to notice one of the legion of flower tubers/bulbs I planted sprouting out of the garden ground today and two Bluebirds were taking turns on the new Bluebird feeder in the back garden--hitting the oven-dried meal worms that these stunning creatures devour like honey roasted cashews on an eight hour flight.

Little things do tend to mean a lot more.
Things that in New York, I wouldn't notice or would stare at fleetingly as I rushed to an audition or a job and not think about again.
I've begun to notice that my mind is taking photographs and filing them away.
I stared up at the sky today; May 1, Beltane... and was just happy to be here.  It was a profound and elementally good feeling.  Not bittersweet or sad, but a real locked in feeling of The Present.
I liked it.
I hope they recur.

I think about people who are in far more advanced stages of this than I.  A little girl comes to mind who is dealing with Acute Myeloid Leukemia and has to deal with a second bout of intravenous chemo as well as the pain and the jagged hope of a bone marrow transplant.  This is all she knows.  This battle for normal.
It stuns me into respectful silence and extreme empathy.  From my former perch outside and away, I am suddenly zoom-lensed in to not a only a ringside seat, but a place in the arena.  Surprised... gob-smacked, but ready to fight--clumsily at first, with the weapons I have.  If anything good comes out of this bullshit, it is this; Empathy... Compassion....  Shutting the hell up and paying attention to other people... 

I can't say that these were formerly my strong suits, but hey... if it's an unexpected by-product, Mazel.