love your suffering

You know quite well, deep within you, that there is only a single magic, a single power, a single salvation... and that is called loving. Well, then, love your suffering. Do not resist it, do not flee from it. It is your aversion that hurts, nothing else.

Thrush before the last chemo and a general malaise. Sometimes my mind forgets that I'm sick, seriously so, and calls my body to action, to the normal life, the life of errands and jobs and making other people happy. My body usually concedes until it has reached its limit, raising the white flag of fever, of aching bones. My body, my body. I must learn to listen to my body before all else.

I think of my last chemo and begin to cry, the weight of the experience is overwhelming. On one hand, I understand that millions have gone through treatment before me, I am not special, this is no big deal. This is life.

On the other, I think about the special hell that I have been banished to within my body for the past six months. The feeling of cellular betrayal, your insides crimping and dying and spasming. The daily heaving, blood coming out of every orifice, heart pounding the rest of your body into submission. The sickly smell of mesna, the many, many sleepless nights thinking about death, wondering how it feels, wondering if it will be in a hospital bed just like the hundreds you've laid in before. Wondering if it will be sooner rather than later. The incredible quiet that envelopes everything when you realize you are alone inside your body, fighting with it, dying with it.

I dare not delve any deeper, I'd rather just forget it all.

ortho surgeon consultation on May 4th. We'll decide if I need to lose a hip in addition to all of this other nonsense.

until then, last week of chemo!