You know the cliché, sadness has its place, as without it we wouldn't know what it's like to be happy? Well, sickness has its place, as without it we wouldn't know what it's like to be healthy. I really really appreciate the days where I'm feeling well and normal, where I can eat as much as I want without feeling sick, where I feel comfortable. Yesterday was terrible. I had my second cycle of chemo (third round) and for the first time I threw up as a result. I was already feeling terrible in the hospital when chemo started, curled into a fetal position, refusing to open my mouth to talk because my throat just felt too horrible. I don't know why I made myself go and tutor, threw up at the kid's house once and six more times when I reached home. Couldn't eat anything, so I ended up puking acid. My tongue was burning and I could feel my teeth rotting. Woke up at four in the morning from hunger. Took gastric meds and painfully went back to sleep. Today's much better though, though I still feel like crap. At least I got to eat a little bit, didn't puke as much. Spent the whole day in bed drifting in and out of sleep, watching Taiwan dramas trying to feel better.
Whenever I go for chemo I really doubt my ability to take seven mods next sem. If I felt this terrible every time, I'd have to skip school twice every two weeks. Oh well, I'm trying really hard to internalise take it one day at a time. Tomorrow has its own worries, just deal with today's today. Who of you by worrying can add an hour to your life? My mind keeps drifting off, thinking about chemo two weeks from now, chemo forever and ever and ever, feeling this awful this often. But hey, that's not gonna help. I just have to deal with whatever I'm going through now. And hey, if I survived surgery and all the other side effects, I can deal with this too. I don't know what kind of person cancer is turning me into. At times I feel like I'm becoming a much angrier person, entitled, as if the world owes me something. Other times I feel kinder, gentler, because I'm weaker.
Giselle the sweetheart reminded me of refining silver. Malachi 3:3, He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver. A silversmith had to hold a piece of silver over the fire and let it heat up. He explained that in refining silver, one needed to hold the silver in the middle of the fire where the flames were hottest as to burn away all the impurities. He not only had to sit there holding the silver, but he had to keep his eyes on the silver the entire time it was in the fire. If it was left a moment too long in the flames, it would be destroyed. When asked how he knew the silver was fully refined, he answered, when I see my image in it. At the end of the story, it says, whatever you're going through, you'll be a better person in the end because the Lord will not leave you in the situation for too long to be destroyed by the fires of this world.