The last 54 hours haven't been great.  My stomach, despite massive quantities of Imodium, hasn't been cooperating, and all of that leads to more fatigue and less energy to get things done.  I haven't even read anything, though it doesn't help that the last book I downloaded to my Kindle was David Foster Wallace's 1100 page Infinite Jest.  I read about 40 pages of it, and it wasn't nearly as show-offy as I had expected, but somehow I'm having trouble picking it up again.  The Kindle lies like a reproach on the table in front of me.  Not having much energy and not having done much, today's entry is going to be short (oh-oh--a dangling modifier; I'd never let my students get away with that sentence).  This isn't meant to be worrisome: the ups and downs are constant, and sometimes the ups are higher and the downs are lower than others.  It's just the way it is, has been, and, I'm sure, will continue to be.  I've taken chemo every day for the last 21 months, and although it's clearly done really good things since I've more than doubled my prognosis, it's also inevitable that my body won't always be happy with the injection of toxic chemicals.

One of the hardest things about living with cancer is what it does to your self-image.  I've often said in these blogs that something is just my nature or is simply not my nature.  And I do believe that for most people, a cancer diagnosis doesn't lead to an epiphany (when someone claims it does, the enlightenment is always the same: live everyday to the fullest, etc.) and changes in the way one lives but rather just reinforces the way people already are.  But sometimes the physical realities clash with the way one has always seen oneself.  Some of the conflicts are reflections of the new physical conditions: my hair turned white, I limp, I have trouble with stairs unless there's a railing.  But more significant are changes in how I see myself.  I had always thought of myself as energetic, curious, adventurous.  I prized competence and getting things done.  Now, I make a mental list of what I need to do during the day, and if there are more than two things on the list, it seems overwhelming.  Just getting my tuches off the couch to clean up the kitchen requires several minutes of forethought.  I always thought of myself as someone who laughed easily and often.  I still do when I'm awake, but three hours after I take the chemo, I know I'm going to crash for an hour or so.  After lunch, I know that the black wave of fatigue is going to drive me to bed for two hours.  I'm not exactly a fun person these days.  And it's Mohamed who has to see me this way 24 hours a day. 

I'll be back on Friday with, I promise, more energy.