I never used to think my body would betray me until I was quite old and the pieces started aging beyond their ability to repair themselves. Then, of course, this cancer business started and I realized that sometimes it isn’t just age alone that causes your body to rebel against you. As we wound our way through treatment, I thought perhaps I might be able to recover as quickly as I’d always recovered from the dings, scrapes, scratches, sprains, and other assorted mishaps I’d experienced over the years – the result of an active life. Unfortunately, this has not turned out to be the case. As one of my ENTs puts it, it’s a major medical trauma, and the rational part of my mind agrees and understands this. The other part of me gets frustrated because of the physical limitations and the inability I have now to accurately (100%) predict how my body is going to react to something: anything from picking up a bottle of dishwasher fluid with my left arm to eating ice cream I’ve made. I did both of these last night. The former caused pain to shoot up from my shoulder to my head and I nearly dropped the entire bottle. The latter caused me to wake up at 3 in the morning with a bad stomachache (no burning, thank you Prevacid) and a feeling like someone had punched me right in the sternum, so I suppose I need to add Lactaid to my drug cocktails. That caused me not to do much of anything beyond take some drugs for nausea and try to sleep until it went away around 2 this afternoon.

Which means that I did not do any of the things I had planned to do this morning: mow the lawn, make some bread, try my hand at some pasta, and I’m not cooking tonight. It’s disappointing to be hostage to the unknown manner the body will react. I’m hoping that, as all the doctors say, time will help with all of this. And I hope I can remain patient enough with myself to get through it without going slowly insane.