God is my personal cosmic vending machine

So I went into the clinic today for a pre-admit this morning, in the hopes of having a hospital admit tomorrow. Alas, it was not to be. My platelets hate me. Eighty-five thousand is not high enough for chemo. I can just imagine any remaining cancer cells being like, "Yay!" and jumping up and down. Maybe I should go get some weed-killer from the garage and rig up a chemotherapy pump with an old lawn mower, an empty milk jug, and some aquarium tubing. I would probably end up poisoning myself, which would sort of defeat the purpose of life-saving chemo. Ugh.

On a totally unrelated note, I feel like I have done a poor job of informing people about how "out of it" I get during chemotherapy. They will come in for a pleasant chat, and then are completely unprepared when I fall asleep mid-sentence or start talking to the wall. One actually did go like this (alas, I am NOT exaggerating for comic effect):

• Unsuspecting visitor: Hey Jen! How are you?
• Me: Sooooo gooood. How’re your-jeh?
• Unsuspecting visitor: Just fine. What are you doing there?
• Me: Ummm…er jeh…so how are things go?
• Unsusupecting visitor: Just great. Is that a coloring book with a fish that you are coloring…or…getting marker all over yourself with? Did you mean to draw on your face?
• Me: Imma…ber…How going are…thiiiings?
• Unsuspecting visitor: Not much has changed in the past 5 minutes; everything is still great.
• Me: Uh…so I’m sooo haaapyy that things are great with yourr liiiife…what…eh…how are you?
• Unsuspecting visitor: Um…I’m in a hospital.
• Me: Oh my gosh! Why?!!! (I wish that I were making this line up)
  

This was when I was on a pain pump Junish/Julyish, and this amusing conversation was later related back to me. I am no longer on a pain pump, so I am more alert. However, I still tend to repeat myself a lot, get confused, and sometimes just stop mid-sentence with no idea of what I was talking about. And I probably won’t remember very much, if anything, except that you showed up (maybe). Thankfully this is mostly temporary, and I regain lucidity about a week following chemo.

So this brings up lots of opportunities for you. If you hate your cousin because she gossiped about you and you found out about it, you can come in and tell me all about it. Then you can pretend that I am your cousin and tell her (me) a piece of your mind and scream at her (me) all that you want. I might fall asleep or be confused and look at you pitifully like “What did I do?!!! …pout, but I will forget all about it in a few minutes or so. Do you have a burning secret which you must tell somebody but that NOBODY can know? I am the perfect solution to that problem! Just pour your heart out to me and know that your secret is perfectly safe because I have forgotten it already. Do you like to boorishly lecture about some arcane subject that nobody wants to hear about? Just come on in and tell me! I will stare blankly at you and make disjointed statements that have nothing to do with anything. When you are expounding about, “And THAT is the crux to discerning the role of internally desiccated socially constructed paradigms in our cohort,” I will nod knowingly and say something intelligent like “strawberry ice cream is yummy but I threw it up all over myself earlier.”

Generally it is not too scary to talk to me and you are free to laugh at me if I say something stupid; I probably will. Several people have come up to me and have been like, “Oh man, I don’t know how to talk to you anymore. I don’t want to offend you.” Trust me, you will not offend me. I am not cancer. This is really cheesy, but true: “I have cancer but cancer doesn’t have me.” I have bouts of crushing existential sadness regarding the general human condition if I let myself listen to a The Cure album for too long, but I don’t really feel sorry for myself because I'm happy to be alive (if that makes sense). If people want to know how I’m feeling or doing that is totally cool. If you cry or whatever, I don’t mind. If you think that your bout with chicken pox was comparable to cancer and you know exactly how I feel, I certainly didn’t have your chicken pox - so for all I know it was as bad. If after a bad case of food poisoning, you wish to compare puke stories – sounds like fun!

Only one time do I remember someone actually making me MAD. This was off chemo, so maybe other people made me mad while I was on chemo and I forgot about it, but anyway... About the only place where I draw the line is if you are “convicted” that I did something to make God angry enough to give me cancer, and you want to “help me get right” with God so that he will give me back my health. I know that I go to Church because God is my personal cosmic vending machine who will give me everything that I want as long as I am a “good Christian” robot who is in the pew every Sunday and goes through all the right motions. Just forget all those things that Jesus (and pretty much any religion or metaphysical system) said about loving people . If I pray for a Cadillac and get it, then I am a good Christian. If my neighbor doesn't, he must have done something wrong. Oh wait, there are little children in the hospital cancer wards? What?! Oh something must be wrong with their spiritual lives! You know, they must have had a gambling problem or something (those elementary school poker tournaments must be stopped NOW).

But honestly, I am too nice to say this to anyone's face. Most likely I will respond by babbling about throwing up strawberry ice cream earlier. And you won’t know if it is because I am really confused or because I just want you to shut up for your own good so that you don’t mess things up with God too much.