Tough crowd today in the green room! No eye contact, no smiles, no nods from the other patients or hangers about. It’s like everyone has cancer and is going through a brutal treatment or something. Or maybe it was the awful Tilly hat I have taken to wearing because it actually provides shade for my …
Category Archives: Cancer
Symptom Haiku
Scratching without thought Prince song “Cream” sounds in my head Make the connection
More Misbehavior in the Green Room
Thanks to my friend Derek, I present you with another Onion cancer classic “Man With Friend With Cancer ‘Going Through a Rough Time.’”
22
Today’s word of the day is “iatrogenesis.” It means medicine-caused illness. I stumbled across it reading a Jody Berland essay on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome this morning. She attributes it to Ivan Illich’s usage in his writings on medicine (for instance, this piece. But I suspect the term has a longer history worth looking up. In …
23
I am definitely overthinking things. I had originally said I don’t want to sit in the Green Room, I wanted to sit in the big sunny waiting room. The thing is, then am I somehow ditching the other cancer patients going through EBR? There is a social scene in the waiting area. Of course everyone’s …
25
Back in graduate school, one of our cats (Ya-Ya) was acting out and attacking the other cat. Like all cats, he is pretty terrified of the vet. We took him anyway, and they suggested a pet psychologist. (You know where this is headed, right?) So the pet psychologist comes into the vet examination room, and …
26
Announcing an exciting new feature of cancer blogging: symptom Haikus! Since at the beginning of EBR I won’t be able to tell whether most symptoms are actual side effects or just things happening in my body, and they come on slowly and cumulatively, the minimalist form of the Haiku seems appropriate. It also gives form …