Uses for fingernails...

So in the last few weeks, my husband's fingernails have almost all fallen off.  If someone out there is going through this, I will say that the idea of his fingernails falling off was much, much worse than the reality of them falling off.  The idea still makes me shudder, but after him losing 7 out of 10 nails so far, seeing them gone is really a whole lot less gross than I was anticipating.  He has told me that it really didn't hurt at all when they finally came off, and, in fact, he didn't even notice the first one had!  A couple of them came off in the shower without him noticing until after.  He still has both ring fingers and one pinky nail left to go...but his toenails are starting now to turn purple.  Yikes.

Anyway, we've noticed there are lots of things that we use our nails for that really didn't seem important before.  Without nails, it's really hard to pick coins up off the floor.  It's nearly impossible to open a soda can.  It's difficult to do up or undo buttons.  He can not scratch himself or my back for me...I miss that.  

Heebie Jeebies...

Okay, I admit it.  I'm grossed out.  I'm a horrible person, I know.  Right now, I just want to grimace and cringe, and I feel a little nauseated.  My husband just texted me to tell me that his fingernails are coming loose.  I knew that this was a possibility because it was one of the "side effects" we were told about, and then about two weeks ago, they started turning purple, and the PA at the oncologist's office did say it looked like they would probably fall off.  BUT I was really hoping they wouldn't.  I was okay with his hair falling out.  I was okay with his skin peeling off in huge sheets.  I was okay with the blisters in his mouth.  The fingernails coming loose has definitely got me all ickified. 

I owe him though.  A few years ago, I got very sick, and I had to have a drain put in my side to take care of an abcess, and he was so good about helping with changing the bandages and keeping it clean, and if he was grossed out by it, he never showed it.  I'm afraid I won't be able to do the same when I see his hands this afternoon.

Damn.  I hate chemo.

I was going to call this...

Post "Sunday Morning," but I've already used that for a title a while back, so I'm kind of stumped. 

So anyway, while trying to think of an awesome alternate title, I started thinking about the Maroon Five song called "Sunday Morning."  And now I'm all side-tracked with song titles, because then I was thinking of other songs about Sunday, like U2's "Sunday, Bloody Sunday."  I don't think that would make a good title though. I suppose I could use "Pleasant Valley Sunday" by the Monkees, but I don't live in Pleasant Valley...

Monday has "Manic Monday" by the Bangles and "Monday, Monday" and "Rainy Days and Mondays."  Tuesday has "Ruby Tuesday" and "Tuesday Afternoon."  I've seriously got nuttin' for Wednesday and Thursday, but Friday has that song with "Friday's on my mind" in it.  I'm not sure who sings that one.  And, of course, that new silly "It's Friday, Friday" song by some teenage girl.  I remember "Saturday Night's All Right" by Elton John from when I was a kid.  Oh, and the "S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y," that they'd play at the roller rink.  There's an oldie that goes, "Oh, it's Saturday night, and I ain't got nobody.  I got some money 'cause I just paid."  I seem to remember "Splish, splash I was takin' a bath" on a Saturday night.  Wow...lots of songs for Saturday. 

Still nothing coming to mind for the middle of the week.  I wonder if the song writers know of the opportunity they're missing for those days? 

This thought is completely off topic because it doesn't have anything to do with dealing with my husband's cancer, except for the fact that it is early on Sunday morning, and I'm letting him sleep in because he's wiped out from Thursday's chemo.  I have to laugh at myself because there WAS something I was going to write about on this Sunday morning, but now I've distracted my brain so much with song titles that it fell out of my head...and I don't even have "chemo fog" to blame it on! 

And here we go again...

Wayne restarted chemo today.  This is still round two, which has been going on since January, but it's been stopped twice because of his really horrible reactions to the drugs.  Originally, the oncologist said 12 to 18 weeks for this round, but yesterday Wayne was told that they'd do another five weeks (which would make 12 weeks of actual chemo) and then do another PET scan, and then, to quote the doctor, "Go from there."  What a really horrible statement!  Go from there?  Go from there?  I really wish he'd said, "And then we'll be done."  That would be better.  I'm sick of chemo.

I'm fretting more than usual right this minute because I just read about Roger Ebert's passing.  I'd read the article THIS morning about how he had to take some time off to fight his cancer battle again, and this afternoon he's dead.  MSN said that Ebert wrote in 2010 that he did not fear death because he didn't believe there was anything "on the other side of death to fear."  I do agree with him.  "I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state," he wrote.  I like the idea of that.

Keeping the faith...

I wish I could say that I have faith that God will pull us through this cancer, but I can't.  For the last few years, my faith has been drifting more and more away from believing in God.  I don't think I'm completely atheist, but I'm definitely falling into the agnostic category.  If there is a God out there somewhere, I just don't think He has all that much to do with those of us on Earth.  This has been a long transformation.  When I was a child, I always went to Sunday School, and I went to church every week well into adulthood.  I prayed for my father when he had a brain aneurysm, and I think that was the last time that I felt like there was anyone listening, but now I believe it only felt that way because I desperately wanted to feel that way.  I say that because some really miserable circumstances through the last 7 or 8 years have led me to believe that God is not there, or, possibly, if He is there, He's just not paying all that much attention to us.  I'm really thinking lately that He's just a way for humans to be less fearful of the unknown. 


My friend here at work has a little boy who was born with half a heart.  The friend and his wife are some of the most faith filled people I have ever known.  They have gone through so much over the last five years as their little boy has had several surgeries, and then finally last summer, the doctors said he would need a heart transplant, and they were so happy when in the fall, he received a healthy, new, whole heart.  People all over have been praying for him, and there was great joy when he finally was able to leave the hospital at Christmas time and come home.  Last week, his mom posted on Facebook that he needed to have a PET (cancer) scan because some of his numbers were elevated.  Last night, she updated and said the PET scan showed "areas of concern."  Really??  Can this family not catch a break?  If there is a God, why put this little boy through even more?

So while others pray to a God that is appearing to me to be not much more than a figment, I am left not knowing what to do.  If God is all powerful and could heal this little boy, but he doesn't, what chance does Wayne have for a miracle?  And if Wayne gets a miracle, but my friend's son doesn't, how does that make any sense?  I know, I know.  There are people that will say that God's ways can not be known to us, but what kind of Supreme Being would choose a 60 year-old man with his fair share of "sins" over an innocent 5 year-old boy?  I was telling my mother the other day that I am actually more comforted by thinking there is not a God than by the thought that there is one who would allow these things to happen.  Like I said earlier, I am just not sure where I am with this whole faith thing anymore.

I found this quote from the television series Babylon 5: " I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, 'wouldn't it be much worse if life *were* fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them?' So now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe." 

I think they may have been on to something.