Round Two

And they're off.

Joh is in the black corner with a fine look of determination on her face. Ready to go into battle with 'chemo' in the red corner. Oh the fight shall be grand. Such fierce determination on joh's face to beat hodgkin's and to take it down.

I woke on Tuesday morning and felt a little nauseated. Possibly sympathy nausea for how my stomach would inevitably feel after round two of chemo. I rolled out of bed and laboriously made myself breakfast. Taking the greatest amount of time to perform all of my duties, that kind of lingering one can only do when they are very hesistant to get on with a required duty. Like doing the old clean the room and wash the dog before doing the homework. Or deciding you need to watch ugly betty in bed before instigating that exam preparation.

I felt such a sense of dread about how I was about to go into hospital to invariably walk out feeling alot sicker and weaker. It is the mind game that is most damaging, knowingly putting yourself into the ring with chemo to walk out with a red mist on your face and a glazed sheen to ya eyes. I got to steph's house who was once again driving me to St Vincent's hospital. As we walked to the car I lay on the concrete floor of her driveway and did a child like tandrum beating my fist into the ground and kicking my feet in sheer obnoxious determination to make it seen how much I didn't want to go through with it. Luckily we both just laughed and drove to the hospital speaking of birthday party preparations and Bangarra dance companies new work that we both wanted to go see.

Chemo was fine. The waiting wasn't. My blood work took forever. When the results returned it was evident that although I had not too many symptoms and side effects from the chemo my white blood cells were hurting. I would need to inject Neulasta into my stomach every fortnight after chemo to force my white blood cells to be encouraged to be produced out of my bone marrow. Side effects included great amounts of bone pain in the back, neck, and any other bone mass in the body. This made me angry. It wasn't the possibly side effects, nor the idea of injecting myself it was the fact I felt I had failed. I felt like I had cleaned my room and watched twenty seasons of ugly betty and forgotten to study and this test I had failed. Many people don't go on these fucken injections, and if they do it is towards the end of treatment. As a dancer and physical performer I rely on the strength of my body for work and for all artistic endeavours I engage in. My physical strength is paramount to my sense of self. I felt like my bone marrow was making it very clear that it was already tired of this chemo regime and was on low productivity.

After butchering my veins with inserting the line the chemo went very smoothly.

It is now friday week after chemo and I am feeling some lower back pain but relatively no other residue of the chemo. I am once again liberated from the constraints of my multilayered symptomatic response to chemo. Oh how the air tastes so dam sweat and the pleasure of not being nauseated is so dam exciting.

As the weekend draws near and chemo is peeking its ominous head around times corner I reflect on a fortnight of dinner parties, yoga class, vegetable juices and assisting my friend John Flynn to complete his personal manifesto by donating my touch typing fingers to the process. The drones sing a raw and soulful tune in the background as I take heed of the fact I am nearly a third of the way through the process.

as surely round two will sink into three which will invariably come up with a sequence of numbers until the fateful day that my veins, stomach lining and indeed my soul are waiting for

the last round