Documenting the downhill, part 4

Day four. More bone pain. Some water retention/swelling. Emotionally more stable (I think).

I feel like a bird that gets turned into a catfish every 4 days (and then back again 4 or 8 days later).

The catfish understands what it means to be a catfish. It's dark, murky, risky, and there's pressure everywhere. But that's the life of a catfish, so the catfish goes on.

The bird knows what it means to be a bird. It's light, airy, risky, and the weather can change at a moment's notice. That's the life of the bird, so the bird goes on.

The difficulty comes when the bird starts turning into the catfish or the catfish anticipates being a bird. See, it's not all that bad being a catfish because, after all, you're a catfish! But it's nothing compared to being a bird. Had the catfish never been a bird, it's life would be fine. Unfortunately the catfish gets to be a bird every 4 days and now it knows what it means to be both a catfish and a bird. The bird part thinks the catfish part sucks!

See, I was in the bottom of the lake in the ooze just ten weeks ago, so being a catfish would be a perfectly acceptable condition for me now if that was the limit of my expectation. Oddly, the "active ingredient" in my chemo also turns me into a bird (an emotionally unstable bird, but a bird none the less). While I'm not the high-flier I was last year, I'm at least a seagull and that's way better than being a catfish in my book.

I wanna be a bird again. Five more days of this catfish thing.