Chemo patient walks into a bar...

More and more, I'm finding humor allows me to deal with what is happening in my life. When I feel absolutely disgusting from the toxins pumped into me, somehow the absurdity blooms, and the humor is there, ripe for the picking. When I begin feeling better, and have to get back to the quotidian, I find even more to chuckle, guffaw, chortle, and snicker about.

I feel almost shameful about this reaction; it's a bit like being in 7th grade gym class, desperately not wanting to be there, but enjoying the potential for snark in every silly thing being required (you may not have hated gym as much as I did, but you must have known not everyone was having fun dribbling).  It would be more proper to take it all seriously; it's a serious illness and treatment. Much of it is hideous. And yet, wow. Funny.  

Maybe it began when the surgeon told me about putting this port in me, under my skin. It makes it possible to pump powerful drugs into my jugular vein. Or is it my carotid artery? I am a woman who has only fainted twice, both times when someone described their medical procedure. The fact that I could listen to her tell me about putting a bit of technology under my skin, and into my vein/artery, and yet not flop over and require those smelling salts taped up in every examining room means I am seeing the wacky in all of this. I suppose the best description is in David Byrne/Talking Heads song, "Once In a Lifetime":  how did I get here?!?  

I have found myself in another part of the world.