Sea sick under the seagulls
Ding ding round 2, my journey through the cancer seas
Gulls have such big wings, so definitive, they fly with a cranky grace across the skies, far inland when the picking is good. It amuses me to find that the nauseous sea sickness I have from round 2 of chemo seems akin to being on a boat at sea. Here I lie, at the edge of a local field, sprawled on my back gazing aimlessly up at the gulls above. Is Jonathan Livingstone Seagull up there I wonder? Odd thoughts, abstract and disjointed. This sensation in the belly is relentless and unkind. Much like sea sickness is constant when you are on a boat. I am dreamy from the drug cocktail, and the ground is moving, or is it me moving? Probably me. The solid earth is reassuring when I rub my fingers into it. I gently wave my arms out to the side like a kid making an angel shape in the snow. Only there is no snow, there is only me, too tired to move, feeling bloody sick and at sea.
So you get the flavour of round 2. They tell you about the nausea, in fact I have 3 different brands of tablets aimed to help. My oncology nurse conspiratorially whispered that they would become my best friends before I started the chemo. At the time I did think she a bit mad in saying so, and yet here I am. She is right. I wipe my eye and realise I’m crying, with absolutely no memory of when or how that started. Its a pleasant surprise in a salty warm kind of way. A blessed relief and takes my mind off the nausea for a moment. I think I will just stay here for now, not that I can move. Moving takes concentration and focus and I need to build up to that.
Lazily my thoughts drift and soar like the gulls, only I’m not really seeking specific food sources like them. I’m just here. I laugh as I remember the submarine like quality of my recent hyperbaric chamber experience last week. So much of my life feels crammed with metaphors of the sea right now, good thing I’m set on becoming a pirate, though I definitely need to deal with the nausea for that dream to come true! I digress, where was I ? Oh yes the oxygen chamber. That was surreal. Sat inside my friends chamber, listening to the hiss of air pressure and looking at her face through the tiny porthole windows as she checks in to make sure I’m not about to have a panic attack. I get claustrophobic you see, so Its taken a while to be in one of these. It was funny though and I did laugh, we both did.
Anyhow it was a very odd process. You have to constantly pop your ears as the pressure builds, I think she said that it was like being taken to 12ft below sea level. A deep sea dive aimed to enrich your cells with maximum oxygen. I swear my eyesight improved, at least temporarily. I had the yellow submarine tune strumming round my head whilst I was inside, I mean how could you not in that circumstance? Did I feel better? Yes I think so. I certainly slept better and had more energy the next few days. That was another life, another sea though, somewhere before the last round, today I’m not navigating so well on the floor.
Tonight I am a shipwreck. I’m the timber in pieces on the rocks and the sea is heaving under the starry sky. From my wet faced vantage point I hear the gulls, funny how I can hear the gulls. Its dark here. Lonely but for the birds. I need to get up, I’m so tired. I know folk will help. Still I lie in a stupor of weep and haze. I close my eyes. How are the birds singing? Its night. Nightbirde. There is a singer out in this world who is my hero and that is her name. In this hour of crash, I listened to her. Everyone should listen to her. She is remarkable. 30yrs old, terminal 2% chance of survival from cancer and still she sings. Haunting, heart wrenching purity of soul in the face of it all. I can get up. I heave myself to sitting and pick up my phone. Its alright the nightbirde is calling me home to you all.
