- Yes, But I Never Inhaled

Okay, so I got stoned today. But before you start judging me, I want you to know that I never inhaled - not even a little bit. So there.

And it wasn't my fault. I mean, it's not like the nurses or my Oncologist asked my permission or anything! They just sat me down, inserted the needle, and told me to enjoy my new chemo regime. Well, they didn't exactly say that, but it was close.

So there I was, sitting in the beat up La-Z-boy chair in the Oncology ward, when suddenly, it HIT me! My mouth wouldn't work! My tongue had a mind of its own! I couldn't communicate in complete sentences! I was drowsy and disoriented! I was woozy! I was not myself!

I was . . . STONED!!!!

And you know what the culprit was? It was Benadryl !

Yep, in order to avoid any allergy flare-ups, which are a common side-effect of the Taxol chemotherapy I've just begun today, they give large amounts of Benadryl!

Man, that stuff was potent! 

George couldn't resist . . . he grabbed my cell phone and videotaped me trying to communicate, and I must admit, it was pretty funny. And no, I'm not going to upload the video here on my bloggy-blog. 

Some things are just meant to be private. I have a reputation to uphold. I have my principles. I am not going to throw away my dignity merely to give you good folks a good chuckle at my expense. No, sirree.

Although, come to think of it, none of those reasons has ever stopped me before . . . but nah, I think I'll pass this time. Besides, I don't know how to upload a video from my cell phone. Oh, well.

So the Taxol part of the treatment went just fine, but by the time I got through that, it was 5 pm and there was no time left for the Part 2 of the treatment, which is the Herceptin. So I have to go back to the hospital tomorrow for another hour or two to get Part 2 over with.

Nothing much else to report. Oh, yesssss . . . there is one more little detail. 

Just before we got called from the waiting room to go in for the chemo, we decided to eat some cream of carrot soup that was on the lunch cart. 

Volunteers always bring around free soup, sandwiches, soft drinks, and tinned mandarins for the chemo patients & their companions. So there were some leftover lunches on the lunch carts, so George and I each took cream of carrot soup in a styrofoam container.

Of course, what do you do when you're sitting in a waiting room, eating? You perch the container on your leg, don't you? And you carefully dip your spoon in the cream of carrot soup and carefully bring the spoon to your lips, slurp the soup quietly into your mouth, and then you repeat the whole process, right?

Sigh. I guess Drama Queens have a different way of eating cream of carrot soup, which is to follow most of the above-described procedure, except for the part where it says "repeat the whole process". 

I did manage to successfully execute this process two or three times, but on the fourth try, I guess my brain played a trick on me and my leg twitched or something like that.

Anyways, you guessed it - I spilled cream of carrot soup all over my lap, onto my jeans & the chair I was sitting in, plus my favorite purse and the floor around my chair.

Not sure if you can imagine what this particular type of soup looks like when it's spilled, but if you can picture a baby throwing up, and imagine this putrid orange liquid with wee chunks of whatever in it on various parts of your clothing, then you'll probably have a very good mental image of what it looked like. It was gross.

I went to the bathroom to try & mop myself up, but of course, my jeans were getting kinda wetter by the minute since I was trying to rinse them with some water, plus the blue dye from the jeans was coming off onto the  paper towels. 

The electric hand dryer machine is about four feet up from the floor, so I couldn't figure out quite how to get the jeans close enough to it to dry them, since I didn't feel like disrobing in the bathroom & then hearing them call my name through the door that there was now a chair free & it was chemo time at last.

So I went through the afternoon chemo session with . . . er, wet pants, so to speak. These kinds of things only happen to me, I tell you. It's just not right.

Speaking of these things just happening to me, maybe you'd like to have a chuckle or two by listening to me tell yet another embarrassing story, except this one happened in a bus, not in a hospital waiting room. Just click here to go to YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsD8lTrDESo&feature=channel

Well, that's about it for tonight! I am still slightly stoned - actually, more sleepy than stoned - so I'm going to go to bed now. 

And just imagine! I get to do this every Monday for the next eleven weeks! Whoo hoo! The Quebec government is paying for a pleasantly plump, menopausal 50-year-old to do drugs! 

It just doesn't get any better than this, does it?!??!?