Keep smiling!

I am invariably in a grouchy mood till a week after my chemo therapy. I bite my tongue every time I want to chew up somebody. Most of the time I think I am successful…at controlling that overpowering urge. Of course I am not. I end up snapping, cribbing, ticking off my husband and my children. The net result is that I end up fighting and then drowning in self sympathy.

The truth is that I am in misery. Every possible side effect of the chemo drugs reigns over me. I feel drowsy and lethargic. I am weak. The nausea kills me. My mouth is full of ulcers. My tongue aches. I cannot swallow the food which in any case has no taste. My stomach aches and my heart burns. Not a short, tidy list, isn’t it?

Yet, I can sink only that deep. I cannot possibly die of misery when I already have an option of dying of something as majestic as cancer!!! So I keep popping in various capsules to keep my self afloat.

While those colourful pellets, one, two, three and more go in, I realize that the most important duty of my life is to be happy. I call it “duty”. It is so easy to bask in self pity. It is so easy to call my family and friends and tell them how unfortunate I am, how much I am suffering and how unjust God is. It does not reduce my suffering in the least; it just increases somebody else’s. Isn’t there enough misery in the world already?

I figure that I cannot chew the food, it is painful. But I can relish yogurt or gorge on stewed apples and vanilla ice cream! So there you go…much of my misery reduced! I attack juicy melons, mangoes, bananas, yogurts, ice creams and kheer with such passion…it is unbelievable! I also do not need to worry about adding kilos…I am a cancer patient, remember? I am happy and so is everybody around me.

I do not want to chit chat with anybody…I am grouchy and I feel like being nasty. I develop a new strategy…just ignore the world around me. I pick up little children’s books to read or just watch mushy romantic films. Such fun!!

The point is who wants to be with grouchy negative people? Look for the positives in a disastrously negative situation. So what if you don’t have a, b, c? You at least have x, y, z. You will see the rainbow. It will make you smile and the world around you will smile at your positivity.