Chemo (round 1, week 2)

It went fine on Monday. I felt less much queasy the days afterward–maybe it was not getting the bone-loss medicine this time (that’s only once a month) or maybe it was my body realizing the second time around that it would not be poisoned, or maybe it was the anti-emetic med I asked to take for 3 days at home. I took it half the time.

I am working on a meditation for getting the Eribulin, visualizing it traveling into my bloodstream and from there to all the cancer sites it needs to convince to stop growing. Thank goodness for all those Anatomy & Physiology classes! I send the little Eribulin molecules to my sternum, the inframammary lymph nodes just to the left to my sternum, the interpectoral nodes behind my left breast and the “suspicious” node above my left collarbone…then back to the heart, up to the brain to visit the zapped mets up there, then back and over to the lung nodule, then back, then to perfuse my whole healthy liver to make any tiny micrometastases that are underway wink out. I imagine the tumor cells as little electric-spark-like things that are extinguished into dark calmness by the action of the Eribulin.

Since Monday’s chemo I have been actively practicing my new spiritual practice, “butt-on-sofa.” This means gathering everything I need for a while, then SITTING DOWN and not getting up every 15 minutes to do things. It means when I need to visit the bathroom from the sofa, I: visit the bathroom and come back. I don’t return a few things to their places on the way to the bathroom, do a bit of sink-wiping in the bathroom, check on the firewood supply, take some stuff to the kitchen, do a few dishes, and put a few things upstairs before coming back. It takes attention from me to do this, kind of like meditation does. I guess it’s the same element of putting more attention on one’s actions/thoughts than before, consciously, to achieve a different state (in this case, more physical rest to adapt to fatigue).

My brain is not so tired now that I am easing off the anti-seizure meds that were making me goony for the week after radiosurgery. Which is nice. But I still have body fatigue, and I don’t know whether that is the result of chemo or still lingering from radiosurgery. I guess this will all settle out as the weeks go on.

5 thoughts on “Chemo (round 1, week 2)

  1. Gina Qualliotine

    ‘Butt on Sofa’ fits perfect with something that popped into my mind recently about ‘REST IS THE NEW MEDITATION’.
    It’s so easy for us in our culture to turn meditation into another DOING and that also makes us somebody doing it.
    Rest is not an ego sport. Straight up brainless chillin’ probably looks more like true meditation then many official practices.
    May your butt be happy
    May your butt be free from suffering
    May your butt know the truth of who it really is
    in this very lifetime 🙂

  2. KM

    I love “dark calmness”—

  3. Isa

    I’m with KM.

    “..extinguished into dark calmness by the action of the Eribulin”
    Gorgeous. I love Eribulin. And you, Ellen.

  4. Carol N

    Butt on sofa, new meditation. Wishing you, healing energy, healthy cells replacing those that need to go away.. Love you

  5. Dee

    I LOVE all the people who love you! and all the love they are sending your way – what a wonderful by-product of a dark illness these increased expressions of love are. Remember that you are swimming in our love, breathing-in our love as you see the Eribulin “extinguish into dark calmness” those mets.

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