Just have to laugh at how not funny this week has been

I got a couple of hours of lucidity this evening, and didn't know what to do with them. Since Tuesday I've been destroyed by either a flu or a cold or whatever. My immune system is waving the white flag at it, in lieu of having any white cells left to take it out. I didn't get out of bed yesterday. Today was a bad chemo day, which means that I had to choose between nausea and narcolepsy. Narcolepsy always wins that one, via my good buddy Compazine. There's no way to tell if the chills and sweats are from menopause, the flu/cold, or the weather. Since I have to be hospitalized if I get a fever over 100, I've been taking my temperature every few hours. I hit 99 this morning. I felt kinda proud, like I'm not a complete hypochondriac. (It went down after the 99. No open-back nightie for me.)

Yeah, so meanwhile, I have 3 exams this week. Wednesday I took an immunology exam (speaking of "white cells," more accurately: polymorphonuclear leukocytes, which I know a crazy lot about). I was, all things considered, really well prepared. But it didn't go well. It was like I had a coked-up gerbil brain. I had two more exams to study for, so I had to let it go.

(Did I mention I'm moving in 5 days?)

For the last couple days, I've been trying to study for biochem and genetics; I have exams in each tomorrow. I really love these subjects. But for the last couple days, I can't tell my biochem notes from my genetics notes. I'm pretty sure that I'm supposed to know glycolysis and gluconeogenesis for tomorrow, and be able to do Michaelis-Menten equations. Something with transposons. Unfortunately I'm also supposed to be able to name enzymes and intermediates and free energy of formation and stuff. This all runs right out of my brain. I know there are a bunch of "6's" in them - like foo-6-bisphosphate. I know there are a bunch of kinases and phosphatases. But I am nowhere near responsible ownership of the information upon which I'm about to be tested.

A few hours ago I snapped out of a Compazine haze, and started looking through my biochem textbook, and realized how far I was from anything like mastery of the material. And I just started laughing. Because I'm not taking these tests tomorrow. I know in advance that I'm not set up to handle how it will feel to bomb them. I'd score 15 or 30 points just by showing up and getting my name right, but whatever. I did enough math a few minutes ago to figure out what I have to do over the next 3 weeks to recover. And I'll either recover or I won't. It doesn't matter. I got into med school. I secured my health insurance for the year. If I can recover, that's cake.

The point of all this is that I was right. Back on July 9, when I got that eventful mammogram, almost the first thing that went through my mind was "defer med school." Folks told me I could do it, don't defer, I could get to Florida and find a support group and chemo's not so bad. Yeah bite me. I was right.