Tides

Tides.

It’s four days since the second chemo. People sometimes wonder what it’s like and I can’t exactly say. The woman I met when I first went to Garry screwed up her face and said she couldn’t describe it and now I know what she meant.
It’s such an odd feeling of discomfort, like being squeezed, stretched, prodded, pinched, stuck into corsets. Joints ache and bones niggle, even in the usually quiet places like coccyx, ankles, shins, toe nails and scar tissue.
There is nausea, wind, constipation, looseness, hunger, but they can all be fleeting, like waves in the wake of a tide of chemicals passing through.
There is fretfulness, restlessness, rage, and a deep seated nastiness about everything, even things once liked. Listened to Summer Lightening by PG Woodhouse on Radio 4, a whole hour of it, but couldn’t follow any of it, and everyone in it seemed vaguely hateful and threatening.
The faces of people I don’t like and all the news I don’t want and financial worries crowd in. I need to note them down like tumour markers in a CT scan, for instant future dismissal from my mind.
Sunday evening sit in the garden in the sunshine, waiting to be served asparagus and salmon with watercress sauce. Cry, then stop crying, then start again. What can I do with myself? The question asked by everyone bathing and bashing about in chemo.