It's the little things

Cancer is a big scary word. We all know someone who has died from it, gotten it, survived it, or operated on it, but it is still a great unknown. That is why I chose to bury my head in the sand. One of my colleagues who survived read every bit of research she could find. I focused my attention on how I could draw in eyebrows should the time come.

So for me, it is not the big scary things that frighten and frustate me it is the little things that occur every day that I can't control. The almost neverevending queasiness, the taste of metal in my mouth, sores, infections, pestilence, plague, and keeping my scarf pulled over my ears. You know, the little things. I thought I had it all under control. I don't.

I am getting ready to start my next round of chemo facing a whole new drug. I made the mistake of looking it up on the world wide internet to find side-effects. What I found were horror stories of nail fungus and neuropathic pain. I can take pain, but nail fungus? As I said, it's all the little things that pile up every day and become this giant mole hill that I get out of bed every day and climb over. But I know I am lucky. I have a good prognosis and the side effects are annoying but not insurmountable. I just spoke with a colleague whose mother has had cancer for seven years and she lost all her body hair, but never her eyebrows. God is good.