Done

An unexpected crash overwhelms me this morning. At least I have no immediate obligations. Except for the notice I received on Thursday, advising me to go in for a blood draw early Monday to check my magnesium, I have no confirmed appointments during the upcoming week. But the blood draw will determine whether I need to go in to receive more magnesium the following day. I do not feel good enough to do anything but stay in bed and sleep. Not even good enough to sleep. My stomach throbs. My head aches. I feel something like sharp rods pressing against my internal organs. When I try to rest, with my head on the pillow, I hear something pounding on my eardrums…hard enough and loud enough to splinter the membranes inside my ears and cause a perpetual echo. If I had sufficient energy, I would scream, in an attempt to block out sounds that try to compel me to slit my throat. More hydrocodone, if only I can find any more. Or sleeping pills. Or something that could snuff out the noises and the constant jabs of minor—but irritating—pain or frustration or whatever it is that makes me want to be in a deep, utterly unconscious state. My fingernails seem to be decaying. Halfway down the quick, they look dull. They are fading; becoming chalky. And my runny nose is bleeding again. Am I imagining this wholesale degradation of my body? Or have the chemicals and repeated doses of radiation finally reduced my immunity so much that my body has surpassed simple deterioration, sliding directly into rot? I was prepared for four sessions of chemo and two years of Keytruda follow-up. But I’m somewhere numbering fifteen to seventeen sessions of chemo, only a few sessions of Keytruda, and 25 sessions of radiation treatment. I said, recently, I could not complain. I’m proving myself wrong. I can complain, I can bitch, I can gripe, I can whine and whimper and object strenuously. It does no good. No more of this. I am done.