Part Thirty-Six: Vacation Days

            Folding laundry earlier this week, I suddenly felt as if I were on vacation.  It seemed a bit odd for a moment, but then I realized it is true.

            Taking back on some everyday routines is just about as good as shedding those routines to go on a trip.  True, beach, water, and mountains sound awfully good right now, but since those are not in the immediate forecast, I’m enjoying today’s landscape.

            A line from an old song, probably dating to the 70s, just popped into my head: “You don’t know what you got till it’s gone.”  Isn’t that the truth?  The week before I was hospitalized for pneumonia, I lost a lot.  My oxygen-starved brain did not recognize how ill I was becoming, but my back and knees knew they could not bend.  I could not pick up and carry my laundry out to the washer, nor could I reach into the washer to put it in the dryer. Folding anything was out of the question as well.  My daughter did my laundry and picked up all the stray Kleenex and anything that had landed on the floor.  I simply could not, unless I was willing to experience even more excruciating pain.

            So there I was at my bedside early this week, folding up a second load of laundry and feeling pretty amazed I could.  But laundry does not all of my vacation make.

            There are walks around the block now with one of my neighbors.  There is time hanging out with my grandkids.  There is freedom to get into my car and do my own errands.  There is going to Bible Study Fellowship on Tuesday evenings, choir practice on Wednesday evenings, and church on Sunday mornings. 

            Food tastes good again, and the metallic taste in my mouth is gone.  True, my tongue feels like it is burned, and my sore-prone mouth prefers soft to crunchy.  I seem to be losing my eyelashes, but my scalp is covered with a soft buzz of hair, maybe as long as an eighth of an inch.  I can manage two-hour outings, sometimes even three-hour.  I have enough concentration to read books. 

            This morning during my chemo here in Bartlesville, I remembered to take a selfie and drowsily said a prayer with my nurse between Benadryl and Taxol.  Before the Benadryl at least, shy me enjoyed conversation with the couple who shared that nice little end corner of the chemo room that has the advantage of being close to the bathroom. 

            My neighbor dropped me off at 9:30 am and picked me up at 1 pm.  I took a nap, ate a snack, read my mail, and then did something totally unprecedented:  I walked down the block and back.  Never before have I done that on a chemo day. 

            I love vacations.