Hope Is Her Middle Name, Part II
Apocalypse Meow, Abigail's Journey
This year, Abigail Henderson (of Gaslights fame) was diagnosed with Stage III, Inflammatory Breast Cancer (IBC). On November 8 at Davey's Uptown and November 9 at recordBar, her family of friends, including scores of artists and businesses, are throwing a benefit, Apocalypse Meow, to help her meet the medical expenses.
Some of us are blessed to have a few friends stand with us in our darkest hours. When you read Abigail's chronicle of this journey, you will understand why and how an entire community will stand beside her with hope.
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Hiccups, Bourbon, and Gravy
I have decided the DOCTORS can't have everything. They can take my cigarettes, my hair, my deep-seated need to nibble on fried cheese, they can take away my ability to wear v-neck t-shirts without scaring children, they can even take my boob....but they cannot have my bourbon!
No. No good DOCTORS...you cannot have it! Please understand, I don't want all of the bourbon, and I don't want it all at the same time. Excessive alcohol intake is a risk factor for breast cancer. The operative word here is being excessive. My level of intake before this nasty business wasn't even close to what most good MEDICAL folks call excessive (and mama can drink).
But the conclusion I have come to is that late in the evening on Saturday nights I will slip on down to my favorite bar and have a drink. Just one. Maybe two. And I'll talk to my good folks, and we'll laugh and I'll be normal until just a little past last call and good DOCTORS, you're just going to have to deal with it! I understand you all are trying to save this old girl from death (and that I totally appreciate) but if I'm far gone enough to not enjoy a cocktail now and then good Lord what are we doing? Let me smoke in Paris, Bali, Australia, and be done with all this nonsense! Fuck blueberries at that point...give me brie!
We ain't there yet boys n' girls.
But, last night, in a fit of normalcy, great magic happened as it is wont to do in the middle of absurdity. Nothing too fantastic, really. Just a few cocktails way past midnight and then breakfast at a tiny cafe that reminds me of summertime in New York. And there were plates of toast and gravy, eggs, ham, potatoes. And my lovely friend had the hiccups and fell flat on 18th Street to get rid of them. And the world was the world, nothing short of it, unencumbered, spinning rather lazily toward dawn. And we were there having breakfast, drunk, and fear let us be.
Fear just stuck its spindly fingers in its pockets and turned north toward the river and let us be. Magic. Sometimes I forget how close this line is drawn next to the people I love, how they are as involved in this bullshit as I am. If I could bring them the head of this monster any faster I would.... But last night, just hiccups, bourbon, and gravy.
Monday I get to go to the HOSPITAL again. Breast MRI. I get to see this thing's face. I get to tell it it’s fucked. They put the chemo port in Tuesday at 6 AM. We are really going to have to have a discussion about the hours these PEOPLE keep. I go to bed at 6 AM! Wednesday, we meet with the good DOCTOR, Thursday they start pumping me full of poison, and Saturday the band has a ROCKSHOW!! Small bits of magic....chemo is just going to have to realize I have no time for its nonsense.
XOX
Miss A
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Best Get A Run At It
I went to an appointment with the DOCTOR yesterday and there was a little glimmer in all this. The nastiness hasn't spread. The battery of tests came back negative. That was the first five minutes. The next forty-five minutes were spent discussing the side effects of chemotherapy. Yes, chemo is medicine, more specifically, a cocktail of medicine they infuse through mass quantities of blood through a port (that I had installed) near my Vena Cava.
Chemo, by its very nature, is poison. It’s dispatched to kill the cancer, no holds barred, take no prisoners, spare no life. That's why my hair will fall out by August 21st. That's why I'll spend time I can't get back being shot up with white blood cell booster. My risk for infection is high. My heart could explode (I am told this doesn't happen...much). I have an armload of prescriptions, two of which I can actually pronounce. I was told to go out and get stool softener and anti-diarrheal. Ok dude, which one is it? "We can't be sure." Well, when will I get sick? "We can't be sure."
Ok, will these drugs work on me to prevent throwing up all over my pets? "We can't be sure." What about these mouth sores you keep mentioning? "We can't be sure." And so on and so on. I swear I was just going to rip out my hair yesterday! Leave it in a nice little pile in the waiting room.
So I'm terrified. Yep. It's 7:30 AM on a Thursday and I'm terrified again by what I don't know. And it sucks because all the well thought-out questions and advance planning and research about chemo therapies and their side effects made sense on paper but today they will start happening to me. My body is getting an elephant’s dose of poison. My body will hurl back up everything I put in it. My strong, wolverine-like stout little self will start being fragile and I can't fucking stand that!! I wasn't sick till right NOW! And this is the part when I start getting better. As a wise man once said when I was terrified long ago of some ridiculously trivial thing, "Best get a run at it if your scared..." So there may be a little tidbit on the news tonight, "Strange Girl Runs Through Door To Chemo Infusion Room, story at 11...”.
Every day is a series of navigational maneuvers in worlds completely foriegn to me. I usually revel in this sort of thing, except in this case, someone has blindfolded me, shaved my head, cut my Achilles tendons, and said, "Go fight!" My initial reaction is, "Go fuck yourself, you go fight!" To which a gravelly voice booms down from the heavens...
"Ain't nobody here gonna go there for you....you've got to go there by yourself..."
Cancer really pisses me off!
XO
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