Chemotherapy, Menopause, Death and Adversity

It is pleasant to look out the window today and see blue sky.  It is only momentary, we are expecting more rain this afternoon.  The last four days we have had dense thick fog in Chicago.   At times, I have not even been able to see anything out my windows fourteen floors up.  Not sure if the weather has affected my mood or all these other things swirling through my mind and body have sent me to a dark place.  What I would say globally about the last three weeks is that I have not been as sick as I was the last chemo round but I am also not as well.  I am not sure if that is understandable.  I have not bounced back like the last cycle and I still have one more to go.  

Monday is my last chemotherapy session.  Everyone else seems excited and has been very encouraging about it , like this is some sort of end.  I know that there are at least weeks to follow where the drugs will keep ripping me apart inside.  My mind swirls with the thought, "how low can you go" like my body is playing in some sort of Limbo game and I have to keep bending over backwards. The drugs are still killing cancer cells.  I can't look out there and see when I will feel good again.  No one can answer that.  Is it two months after chemo or four or six?

The chemo is forcing me into menopause.  Yesterday afternoon I cried.  Sometimes my eyes just dripped and a few times I crawled into my bed and sobbed.  By the end of the day, I was putting ice packs on my eyes to cut down the swelling.  Pathetic.

Perhaps it is menopause and the hormones crashing through my body (when I mentioned this to Ken his eyes popped open with a look of sheer terror).  Perhaps it is just that I am so tired.  I don't wake up anymore feeling rested.  Perhaps it is that my great-grandfather is dying and death seems so close right now.  Everything seems like too much. 

This morning I woke up to a quote in an email that helped me put it into perspective.  It didn't make me feel better but I am looking forward.

 "There is no education like adversity."
          Benjamin Disraeli.