NotChemo Day 4, Radiation Days 14-18: The Hump

We are officially over the hump—this week marked half (or more) of NotChemo treatments and more than half of radiation treatments. So that's three-and-a-half weeks until the end of treatment. That seems ... doable. (Of course it seems doable to me. I'm not having the treatments.)

But what could be more fitting for jumping over the hump than frogs?!

Of course, Vic was not doing any jumping during NotChemo:

He was just listening to some tunes and zoning out under his healing energy quilt!

So how is he doing? Well, that's a good question. Physically, he's doing about as well as can be expected. Now that he's able to get down five cans of "food" a day, he's stopped losing weight. Yea! But the rest of his symptoms are creeping up. His throat is sorer. His mouth is drier. He is more fatigued. Don't get me started on the mucous. And every time he goes to the radiation, it's like adding insult to injury. "Oh, you're able to get five cans of food down—good for you. But you know, you still need to eat or you'll lose the muscle memory and won't be able to eat when food starts to taste good again." "Oh, your blood pressure is down—you're dehydrated. Yes, water tastes like crap, but you need more. Drink up!" "You didn't get enough rest last week." "You're getting too much rest this week."

Which brings me to the emotional. Clearly, he still has his sense of humor:

He's gotten a couple of cards with a dog wearing the "cone of shame," and he decided that he should wear it. He does look pathetic, doesn't he?

At the end of the cartoon panel, the dog falls off the curb and can't get up because of his cone, so Vic decided to re-create that here:

Naturally, Wags was not going to let him do that all by himself:

But he is a little down in the dumps. All this "You have to do this" and "Don't do that" from the doctors coupled with my constant "Did you eat? Are you drinking? Are you resting? Do you need anything?" gets old fast—especially when, let's face it, you just don't feel good, dammit! Normally when you're sick, you kind of get to do whatever you want. But there are rules to having cancer, and quite frankly, that's just not fair.

As a matter of fact, I've had it up to here with "not fair" this week.

So I'll close for now. But stay tuned—inspiration is just around the corner.