11. Then the acupuncturist will open up a piece of tissue paper filled with a white powder, and will hand it to you, and look at you in expectation. And you’ll be like, “Do you want me to . . . Do I snort this?” And then he’ll shake his head at your idiocy and make you open your mouth so he can pour what looks like the stuff from the inside of a Ped Egg into your mouth. Then he’ll laugh at your look of horror, and hand you water and make you keep drinking and swishing it in your mouth until it’s all gone. Then he’ll say, “Ginseng tea for detox,” and you’ll be all, “That’s not how you make tea,” and he’ll smile and walk out while you wonder why you just allowed a strange Chinese man to feed you mystery powder wrapped in tissue paper when he doesn’t even know how tea works. You can just stop wondering now, because there is no fucking good answer to this question.
12. The acupuncturist will leave and you’ll get dressed, feeling mildly assaulted and vaguely confused, and then you’ll realize that you can actually put on your shirt for the first time all week without screaming in pain. And then you go and make another appointment for next week. Except your husband will vow to never drive you again because he claims that now his car smells like “old dirty hippie.”
But here’s the deal: Between the herbs, and oil, and acupuncture, and the cancer drugs, and all of the rest of it, you find yourself occasionally having pain-free days. Days that you learn to appreciate simply because no one stuck eighty-six needles in you that morning. Days when you have an impromptu picnic on the lawn because you can bend your knees that day. Days when studies are released showing that booze helps stave off arthritis attacks. Those are the golden days.
And even on days when I’m bedridden and can’t move, I’m grateful to have my daughter curl up near me and watch old Little House on the Prairie episodes. I try to be appreciative of what I have instead of bitter about what I’ve lost. I try to accept this disease with grace, and patiently wait for the day when they find a cure. And for when I get my monkey butler.3
1. Or the Spanish Inquisition.
2. Actual warning: “Some side effects may cause death. You should only take this drug to treat life-threatening cancer, or certain other conditions that are very severe and that cannot be treated with other medications.”
3. Also, from now on, all the handicapped parking spots really do belong to people in wheelchairs and not just to people who feel like they’re disabled because they have really bad cramps that day. And also, if you’re in a wheelchair you get frontsies in line at the liquor store from now on. And you get free sexy shoes. We need to get this all passed in Congress before I’m disabled because then it’ll look like I’m just doing it for me because that’s what Jesus would do.
It Wasn’t Even My Crack