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| Part II: April Foolery: How Chemo Carol and Star T |
March Madness, April Foolery but May we continue... Mais oui (of course!)…
Part II: April Foolery: How Chemo Carol and Star Trek have a lot in Common.
Now that Duke and the other teams finished their games, March Madness and my six months of chemotherapy treatment were over! With March Madness finished, quiet again reigned supreme in my home—except for the screams of frustration when my computer back up drive developed a short in its circuitry that took out more than just its memory. Though computer crashes are NEVER funny (and I should know as I have had so many of them), the timing did seem to mirror my own loss of memory and functionality and was playing out like a bad April Fool’s joke.
Reggie, my dear computer man who keeps me up and running, had been warning me for a very long time that there would be a time when spit and glue would no longer hold together my computer and more drastic help measures would need to be employed. He was vindicated. I was feeling a bit like my computer—patched over and under but still with broken innards and a central system that was disassociated from its ability to process material. It was sad when he carried off my tower and it did not come back.
Now I might have mentioned that my wonderful husband had bought me a laptop when I was first diagnosed so I could continue to use a computer in the hospital. Reggie and my friend Kitt had taken me before my initial surgery to select a laptop so many months before, since with my great technical expertise all I knew was that I wanted a pretty one. I selected a pretty bronze one to use during my confinement. Unfortunately, I did not have the kind of cancer that allowed me to read and write and learn new operating systems, or the kind of treatment that allowed me to watch DVDs while in the treatment chair.
So my new computer remained lonely and was barely used six months later when it replaced my computer tower. Somehow Reggie hooked all my gizmos and gadgets to my laptop. My once sleek brown unit sat on my desktop with wires running around and through it in a maze that made it look like it was starring in a television hospital drama as the patient on life support. It was easy after this mental image to finally name my laptop--- Spock’s Brain. She was named after the original Star Trek episode when Spock lost his brain to a group of childlike women who ran their highly sophisticated society with instructions the brain provided while hooked up to their central computer. Spock’s Brain also had a confusion of programs and haphazardly saved files so though grateful I had some files left after the crash, I could find little of what I had been working on in any order that I understood.
So, besides losing my blogs to cyberspace what does this has to do with cancer? Now that last statement was significant, because my inability to communicate with people through my new computer I suspect had less to do with it and was more because “I could find little of what I had been working on in any order that I understood” because I was understanding so little.
I have been amazed by the strength, composure and resolve of the women I have met in chemo treatment. Less chatty and silly than I have been, they are as a whole an incredible bunch of women. Each with their own lessons to teach, many with great faith which sustains them and wonderful support groups that provide for them, but quite a few with only their own desire to get through the nasty treatments in order to enjoy good health again. But of all the things that surprised me most was how many of them were able to read and do puzzles while being treated.
I have had difficulty with language—both the placement of words, the appropriateness of ideas and the processing of what I hear and read. I complain a bit more than the average patient perhaps, but each word I have written or read in the last few months came after enormous effort. I have tried, but truthfully, I have been able to read or hear very little with comprehension and cannot imagine how other patients continue to do puzzles and read books while “under the influence”.
I have learned through this experience what it must be like to be slightly demented or challenged by stroke or other problems that hinder language processing and communication skills. I will try to be more patient with others in the future who are so challenged. In all the ways that define me, being an amateur wordsmith is one definition of which I have been proud. Not to be able to express myself has been both tiring and frustrating. I have attempted many times to talk on the phone or even socialize and find that I cannot control the words I say and often they are wrong or just plain inappropriate. I am sorry if you were a victim of one of these attempts at conversation, but I thank you all for trying to pull me out of my deep sleep.
It is not until I started to read with some comprehension two weeks ago and started to understand conversations both in person and on the phone that I realized how much I have not been processing previously. But you know, there was a solution for Spock’s Brain. Reggie took her off life support and instead bought her a port into which all the wires and gadgets fit neatly. She seems happier and ready to work more efficiently though some areas of her computer and stored memory are gone, I guess, for good. Guess what—I have two ports--- an IV one above my breast bone and an IP port in my abdomen. I guess there is hope for me yet: I beat Spock’s Brain!
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Posted by morningstar on 2009-06-02 00:29:42 | Rating: | Views: 49
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