You can puke without interrupting the flow of conversation.

The chemo is over, and if all goes well, I'll never have it again, yet I still feel like shit. I still puked this morning, although weakly. I still have an awful taste in my mouth. I still have this gremlin in my throat that makes me want to voluntarily barf, as though there were anything to bring up. I am now 169 pounds. A week ago I was more than 180.

But worse than all that, or as as result of it, I don't really like myself at all. I have a feeling of worthlessness. I have little money, and I won't have any for a while. I hate my living circumstances. I feel stupid, listless, sad and angry, although not explosively so the way I did in October. I don't feel as though I can attend to anything properly. I wonder what I am doing at work and why they even need me at all. I better understand people that feel as though they are fakes about to be discovered. I have a make up exam tomorrow that I doubt that I will even write because I cannot even find the material I need to study. It's not even that hard, but I will fail this course. I will be a failure yet again. I can barely find the will to move. I feel like a skeleton in many ways.

Two days left of chemo, and I am feeling something that I am not familiar with. Something I have finally been able to identify. I want to be saved.

I never, or rarely have felt this sensation. But I desperately want to be saved by some outside agent from this viciously vomitous (not a word) state. I can't even trust my own saliva or my breath not to send me into gagging fits. (I am puking as I type this with one hand.)

Rose makes everything better. She can see the end when I cannot. She buys little things that I can eat, will draw baths for me when I can't bear it (can't take showers with this apparatus) and generally not forget about me. She saves me. She's away braving the storm, taking her daughter back to her ex. I can't wait for her to get back, although I will likely be too ill to show my appreciation properly. I can barely speak as it is.

But even with this generous support, I still slip into helplessness and despair. Some people feel like this all the time. I couldn't live that way, that's for sure. Tonight, I will go to sleep early to try to bring on day four that much sooner. Then there will be only a little more than a day left when I wake up. Sadly, I will be on my own since Rose has to work. And I will want to be saved again.

This time, it's the last time, unless something goes wrong in the future...

An hour after getting the chemo pump removed and I already feel a little better.

A friend in Japan has sent me a book called The Enzyme Factor. It is a book by a Japanese doctor that has treated cancer and gastrointestinal patients for forty years. His theory is that gastrointestinal health determines health in other areas; that is, if we aren't healthy there, we won't be healthy anywhere. Further, he believes that enzymes are the key to this health. He thinks that the specialized enzymes we see all the time come from a source enzyme that specializes only when needed, and that we have a limited number of them at any given time. It's similar to stem cell theory. Reading the beginning of this book is like reading a detailed list of the things I did wrong to put me in the situation I am in now, which is dreading the last five days of chemo, scheduled for next month.

According to the author, it's all about what you eat and drink. This should not come as any surprise as we've been hearing it for years. But look at this: it's entirely possible that my cancer started developing as soon as I started eating meat again a couple of years ago and started drinking Eastern teas, both green and black. So perhaps in order to avoid a relapse, I should avoid meat, among other things. I don't know. I'll finish the book and get back to you. But I have to say that I am not keen on the last round of chemo. I don't even believe in it; I may simply not do it. It's not like they can strap me down and force me. We'll see.