Tag Archive for 'christmas'

The fall weather makes me think of Barcelona, with the Spanish leaves drying up and falling onto the cafe tables on La Rambla. The leaves don’t change to pretty colors like ours do, but all the haunting architecture in that city makes it the best spot for October walks. The air comes in from the Mediterranean, and it sweeps the leaves across sidewalks, into the stores, and into the churches. Sometimes it feels like it’s always fall in Barcelona.

I wouldn’t mind living a Spanish autumn this year, rather than an autumn filled with chemotherapy. Because you know after this comes Chemo Christmas – and you know what that crummy Chemo Santa Claus always brings good cancer patients – more chemo. I’d rather have coal.

I’ll be going back in tomorrow for another treatment. I expect to be fully wired and entirely disconnected by this time tomorrow – but you never really know what the Chemo Fairy will bring you each time you visit. I’ll admit I’m a little anxious about it. I try to consciously curve this Pavlovian response, but it seems my instincts are not held by reason.

So they’ve given me something called “Ativan.” I had told the nurses that the treatments were starting to make me nauseous, so they arranged the prescription. Although the drug is used to control nausea in chemotherapy patients, it seems to primary be an anti-anxiety drug. As the astute, American philosopher Elbert Hubbard, once said, “The worst thing about medicine is that one kind makes another necessary.”

I might add that a Luftansa flight to Barcelona tomorrow morning would cost $375. That is <1% of what chemo is going to cost tomorrow afternoon.