Horseshoes and Hand Grenades

Cycle 6 is looming. The first day is this Friday, the day after tomorrow. I know everyone expects me to be excited about this. It's the Last Cycle!!!! And yet. For me, it's hard not to see it as anything but the Next Cycle.

It's hard to look beyond the day spent at the Infusion Center, the bloated belly, the discomfort, the weekend spent zoned out and the week spent feeling fuzzy and shaky. Then there's Day 8. More chemo. At first, I was tempted to focus on that day. It really is the Last Day! Then I realized, it's not the end of the cycle. I still have more days that I will feel debilitated before I start a permanent upswing. I wish I knew what that trajectory will be like.

Yes, I'm glad it's the last cycle. But that's a cerebral kind of gladness, and the visceral not-gladness overshadows it.

This past weekend we substituted a metaphorical getaway for our customary end-of-cycle trip. We have subscription tickets to the Steppenwolf Theater and to the Joffrey Ballet, and we arranged for both to happen this weekend. Saturday night we saw Clybourne Park, a wonderful play that examines race relations in Chicago by portraying the interactions between buyers and sellers and neighbors of one house, first in 1959 -- when the concern is a black family moving into the white neighborhood -- and then fifty years later, after the neighborhood has declined and a white family wants to raze the house and build something bigger and newer, which the community resents. Sunday afternoon, we saw a sparkling new production of Don Quixote. With brand-new choreography, a streamlined story, lovely costumes and proficient -- sometimes bravura -- dancing, it was a great production.

It also completely wore me out. I stumbled through the door and headed for the couch, while David cut up some watermelon -- my "drink" of choice when I'm really exhausted -- and then fetched my comfortable clothes. I dozed for the rest of the evening.

Do you know that feeling of aching emptiness when you are really short on sleep? Like after you've had several nights with just a couple of hours sleep, or maybe one all-nighter? Yeah, that's what I feel like. Only I get there after just a little exertion, and regardless of how much sleep I had the night before. It can come on very suddenly -- sometimes just because I've made and eaten breakfast, or spent a pleasant morning visiting with a friend. Yesterday I went for my bridge-to-bridge, lakefront, two-mile walk. I took it at a moderate pace (23-minute miles) and never felt challenged or worn out. (It was, by the way, absolutely gorgeous: 70 degrees, clear sky, scrubby trees by the shore all golden and green.) And when I got home? Instant depletion, that yawning emptiness, relieved only by a two-hour nap.