Chemo Week 2...and Pho Soup

Friday February 10th,

By the title of this blog, many of you may believe that my sanity is slowly slipping away. This may indeed be true, but read on...

So Chemo Week 2 kicked my butt! Nausea, extreme tiredness, and all around feeling like poop! (Note - modified word from original draft...) If I initially had any thoughts of breezing through the treatment, those thoughts are definitely gone. On the other hand, so far it's not as bad as typically depicted in movies such as the Bucket List which show Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman frantically clinging to the commode - well, you get the picture!

I also found myself becoming very irritable and short-tempered, with very specific appetite desiires. Here are a couple lists for your enlightenment:

Food I do NOT want to eat but made to eat by my loving and knowledgeable wife:
- A fresh vegetable juice conconction with every imaginable grain, health powder, Goji berry, etc. etc. added to have the consistancy of a soup!
- Soups that contain not only every vegetable known to man, but with seaweed added!
- No less than 20 vitamin supplements.
- A gallon of water. (Ok this is an exaggeration, but I feel like a fish).

Food I want to eat:
- Pho Soup

For those of you that haven't experienced the joy of this Vietnamese soup sensation, stop reading this blog, look up Pho Soup on Google and find the nearest restaurant. It is very simple: a beef broth over rice noodles with thin strips of rare beef that cook right in the soup. Add garnishments of mint leaves, bean sprouts, and a killer red sauce to top off.

For some reason, even with an upset stomach, this is the most soothing food to me right now and has the ability to alter my mood to one of serinity and satisfaction. (Wait...this sounds a bit like bordering on addiction).

Anyway - enough of this diversion about food. One thing of note this week: after my "chemo-bag" disconnect on Friday (Liberation Day for me), I went out to see the musical "Man of La Mancha" with my good friend and adopted daughter, Jessica Wilson. I am not normally an emotional man (ask Cheryl)...but one of the strange side-effects of the chemo is a very heightened base of emotions. Although I tried my best to hide it, I cried like a baby during the grandiose and heroic proclamations of Don Quixote de La Manacha in To Dream the Impossible Dream, and proclaiming his undying love for the barmaid Aldonza, whom he only sees as beautiful, virtuous, someone to go into battle and die for, and whom he renamed "Dulcinea"!

Sorry if you were embarrassed Jessica!!!

Well, enough said in this blog. Looking forward to 2 chemo-free weeks. Will post if something else exciting happens such as I discover a new entree!

Love you all!

Ron