vicissitudes of chemo

I don't understand chemo at all. There seems to be no rhyme nor reason why, an entire ten days after finishing the last dose of a relatively benign week of treatment, I suddenly decide to start throwing up all night. You just never know how it's going to be with this stuff (other than generally awful, of course). Sometimes chemo is okay, other times it's just not. At all. I thought we had the procedure down for minimizing the unpleasant side effects and getting through that single week. But what works one month just plain old doesn't the next. I can never tell how it's going to be.

I also don't understand why vomiting affects your brain and body the way it does. You don't just throw up until your stomach empties out; you feel dizzy and unstable afterward, too, almost as if your inner ear had been affected by the crisis. Or at least, I do. That's what makes being sick like that so awful. If you could just throw up and be done with it, things would be fine. Unpleasant for a few minutes there, yes, but ultimately fine. But with this stuff you puke your guts out for a night or two and then you go to bed for the rest of the week, because all that vomiting destroyed what you had left of your brain cells.

And I get to do this for another nine months, too.

But at least it's not like this every time. Sometimes nothing happens at all.

Go figure.