When the one you love is hurting

When the one you love is hurting you fell utterly, totally, consummately helpless. Since yesterday, after chemo 11, Ranjan has been listless and completely zapped. For the first time since we started this darned therapy he admitted feeling confused. Chemo fog! My heart shattered seeing him like this. I did not know what to do, how to make it better, how to provide some relief. The toxins that have by now found their way in the tiniest crevices of his body and now mind are playing up and taunting me. At this moment it seems they have won the battle as Ranjan is refusing all the brews and cocktails that I proffer.

I just sit or lie next to him powerless, watching drift in and out of a disturbed sleep, listen to his mumbles trying to make sense of them but failing miserably. The TV may be on but I register nothing, I may have a book open at a given page but am incapable of reading a word, even if its the hottest thriller of the season. I too am lost in a fog of my own strangely also caused by the hated chemo though not a drop could have strayed my way. This is another brand of chemo fog, the one that is caused by your total uselessness in this moment.

The toxins will have to be flushed out slowly. The equation is skewed as the body is unable to eliminate all the toxins in the short 14 days between chemos, so there is a logjam that grows with quantum leaps leaving the body exhausted and knocked out. The total loss of appetite and the nagging nausea does not help much.

Each chemo has been more and more difficult for both of us. The euphoria of initial days has died down and given way to a sense of acceptance of the inevitable. Both of us are lost in an uncanny trance that will continue till the last chemo. Only then will we be able to take our first steps towards a new normal that will be ours to determine.

I only know that this new normal will be more perfect than anything we can imagine! So help me God!