Tag Archive for 'anticipatory nausea'

The Sunflower Fields

“…anticipatory nausea anticipatory nausea anticipatory nausea anticipatory nausea anticipatory nausea anticipatory nausea anticipatory nausea…” over and over in my head this morning without stop. I didn’t, though. Making a mess would have just complicated things.

The Cancer Center was busy today, everybody is dying to get in here. The nurses seemed curt with each other, but they’ve got a tough job, I think they are allowed to be that way with each other now and then. When the nurse came to take my blood, she smiled and asked me how I was. She’s good at her job.

Everybody else in the Cancer Center was already hooked up by the time I got back there. They walked around with IVs and tubes disappearing under their shirts. It’s weird to see people walking around with bored looks on their faces as poison is being pumped into their hearts. It seems like they should have a more dramatic look on their faces; one like they had just been stabbed during a swordfight, etc.

My nurse tells me that my difficulty concentrating lately is due to the drugs. Something “they” call “Chemo Brain.” I’m forgetting names now. Names I’ve known for years and years. Its like parts of my brain aren’t connected anymore. I hope I don’t lose my memories.

They hooked me up to the IV and started dripping the Benedryl. I started to get nervous about the drugs coming on, and I started to feel funny. I thought about my hair falling out, and forgetting friends names, and my skin drying out, and anticipatory nausea anticipatory nausea anticipatory nausea anticipatory nausea… Then I was like, “—- this, I’m going home.”

I jump on a plane bound for Dee-troit, to hang out with Berry Gordy. Coltrane is there too, but you know how that guy is. Everywhere we go he’s taking these HUGE steps. So we get out our old, white, thunderbird convertible and motor around the city.

We stop at the Grand Canyon and get out our hang gliders to get across the gap. But Coltrane had been fooling with his hang glider the whole way there, modifying it and decorating it, so by the time we got there, it was way too heavy. It doesn’t have any practical use. So we drop him in this little town called Winslow and pick up Elton John, because that guy’s a more practical thinker. Coltrane takes off with a chick in this crazy-looking flatbed.

So there we are, me, Berry Gordy, and Elton John, in the middle of the desert, trying to think of which way to go. I tell them I want to go to the beach, and since I’m the one with the successful music career, and since they are just happy to be hanging out with a guy like me, they are cool with the idea. We motor to Malibu and buy a place right on the beach.

After awhile Surfer Magazine starts sending out photographers to check out my crazy moves, but I get bored with it. I want to take off to the mountains for awhile, so I drop the guys and take the ‘bird up to Montana for the weekend.

The people there are wild, and they act like they’ve never seen an outsider.

“What do you do for a living?” They ask.

“I’m a cancer patient.” I say.

“Do you like it?”

“Well,” I admit, “I’m still in training right now, but between you and me, I don’t think it’s for me. It’s steady, though, and they can’t fire me, so I guess it’s ok for right now.”

They’ve never heard of cancer or chemotherapy or anything like that, and it seems rude to talk about such things at the dinner table, so I pull up and forget about it. They serve gyros, and daiquiris; mint chocolate chip gelato imported from Venice, and mussels from this no-name French cafe on the Atlantic coast that makes the best kind. Out back, Sinatra is grilling a pig and mixing poi, which I think it’s pretty ambitious, given his condition.

Out of no where this big group of Tunisian taxi cab drivers runs in and wants to take all of us to their cousin’s place to buy some rugs, but I’m not into it. I thank everybody for the hospitality, and I point the car toward the Dakotas. I want to drive through the sunflower fields before I wake up.

I end up on the beach again, I think it’s the Bahamas, but I don’t know. I miss all my friends, and I want to go home, or get them down there with me. They are probably busy though, so I start driving home. I take the back roads, though, I don’t want to get home too fast.

…

I woke up and took off my headphones. The nurse was pushing buttons, trying to kill the beeping on my IV pump. They told me I should get some sleep.