06 June 2011

Side effects may include muscle spasms in left foot

The chemotherapy and myriad of secondary drugs like to wreck havoc on my physical and mental facilities. Aside from a loss of stamina, the physical problems are mostly gone at this point, eighteen days after the last dose. The mental problems, well, those just get worse. I'm constantly having problems remembering things, such as the names of coworkers and conversations that just took place. Then there are the events that I clearly remember, but never occurred. Thankfully, the people around me are very understanding, yet I still often feel embarrassed.

On top of the memory problems, I'm the proud recipient of hallucinations. Aside from the pedestrian auditory and visual varieties, I also experience vertigo and other movements that clearly couldn't be happening. My favorite, so far, was the time I was convinced that I was rotating about my z-axis. The only problem was that I was lying on the couch, too scared to move.

Then there are the nightmares. Under normal circumstances, I rarely have nightmares, or at least I don't remember them. Lately, my brain has been chock full of the stupid things. I can't always recall what they were about, but I do remember the terror.

Last night, while I was lying in bed, everything started shaking. I looked over at Zero, who was calming staring at me from his bed. His normal response to an earthquake is to run away and hide. Then Matt yelled to find out if I was okay. I asked if there was an earthquake, which he confirmed. Okay then, back to Star Trek and falling asleep.

This morning, I woke up wondering if I imagined the whole thing. Zero never fails to panic when presented with an opportunity, not to mention my recent pile of delusions, so thinking the earthquake was a figment of my imagination, or perhaps just a plain old nightmare, was perfectly logical. But Matt confirmed that it was real. Needing a new conclusion, I determined that the universe is conspiring to rid me of my remaining sanity by further blurring the line between real and fantasy.

1 comment:

photonsrain said...

Hang in there! You're half-way finished.