Sick Of Being Sick

Imagine the worst flu you have ever experienced: explosive diarrhea, projectile vomiting, aching body, headaches, fever, chills and all together discomfort. But what’s the one thing that helps you pull through the twenty four to forty eight hours you feel terrible? Well, that this feeling will pass. Now pretend that you have the flu and all of these horrible feelings persist for months and you’ll have a VAGUE idea of what chemo therapy does to my mom.

Here’s the deal, people, chemo therapy is invasive and it does nasty things to a person. Pair with that emotional distress, weight loss, hair loss, and the inability to taste anything—it gets to be frustrating.

You see, some people don’t understand the enveloping side effects of aggressive chemo-therapy which my mom is currently enduring. Rather, most people are fooled by her smiling face, her wig that could easily be mistaken for her real hair and her positive attitude. But just because you see her with her ‘game face’ on does not mean that she is perfectly fine.

I suppose that is what is most frustrating to me. Some people are extremely insensitive to her current condition when in reality she is fighting through discomfort each and every day. And it gets exhausting hearing people belittle her battle. I hate to sound brash but the bottom line is CANCER IS NOT THE FLIPPING FLU. CANCER IS SERIOUS. I understand that some people see the ‘game face’ and are fooled. But I mean really, this woman is fighting for her life. She used to work all day, make dinner, go to hip-hop and then clean. Now she walks down the stairs and is exhausted because chemo is killing her good cells and her bad cells. I guess the reason for this tangent is if you cannot understand what it is she is going through each and every day then perhaps you should think for a few seconds about what one day in her shoes must be like. She can’t do everything she used to be able to do because she is receiving a CRAP TON OF CHEMO!!!

The bottom line is, whether you are fooled or not by her beautiful face, you’ve got to understand that she is sick of being sick—so of course she is going to tell you she feels okay when she sees you, why would she tell you, “I am miserably uncomfortable, but thanks for asking.”

If you ask me, I think shooting a quick prayer to the Big Guy above would be the most helpful. Ask him to continue to give her strength when the chemo is wearing her down. And most importantly, please try to remember that mom is stronger than 10 Arnold Schwarzenegger’s when it comes to life—so she WILL BEAT THIS. But bear in mind, this ain’t no flu she has… it is Cancer. It is kind of a big deal. While most people have 4-6 installments of chemo, mom is going to have a total of 19; therefore, it is not so simple for her to pull herself together. 10 down, 9 to go!