After Great Pain, The Magical Sea Horses Come

Lately, I keep thinking about this otherwise-untitled Emily Dickinson poem, which begins: "After great pain, a formal feeling comes --" but I keep mistakenly remembering it as "After great illness, a formal feeling comes -- " because I guess I can't help but try to relate it to my present situation and mental state. She was most likely referring to emotional pain, but perhaps Emily did mean to allude to physical pain; she was rather sickly herself, and eventually succumbed to kidney failure in her fifties. Everyone she loved seem to up and die on her. Most of her poetry is about death.

The poem continues like this:

The Nerves sit, ceremonious like Tombs -- 

The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore, 

And Yesterday, or Centuries before?

The Feet, mechanical, go round --

Of Ground, or Air, or Ought -- 

A Wooden way

Regardless grown,

A Quartz contentment, like a stone -- 

This is the Hour of Lead -- 

Remembered, if outlived,

As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow -- 

First -- Chill -- then Stupor -- then the letting go --

Regardless of whether Dickinson was writing about unrequited love, the death of a parent, or the pain of seclusion, the speaker has endured a recent trauma that registers high on the Richter scale; she is shaken, cracked, broken, and and no longer walks through life with the same body. The tone is funereal, and recalls caskets and headstones; her nerves are like "Tombs," her heart is "stiff," her feet are "mechanical."

Somber stuff ... and why did I get so dark all of a sudden? ... But sometimes I wonder if Dickinson was secretly going through a few rounds of chemotherapy when she wrote this poem. I feel so divorced from my body. I feel like this body is not mine. It is weak and tired. It catches infection after infection. It is fragile. It doesn't feel very feminine anymore. It can't go on the subway, or to the movies, or sit on a plane. It doesn't want to go for a run or even a long walk. It naps as often as a two-year-old. It currently cannot stomach vegetables. It needs so many damn pills all the time. But I am unable to break down or cry about it anymore. I feel very "formal." As though I am watching this happen to someone else.

My body truly fell apart on Christmas Day. A few hours after dinner, I started to feel relatively awful. Then it just all went downhill from there. Three infections, a horrible case of thrush, a fever, subsequent stay in the Emergency Room and blood transfusion later, I was sitting in my oncologist's exam room, awaiting the OK for my next round to start.

"We can't go on this way," Dr. Nicemanwiththemeandrugs said, and so I knew that my white blood cell count was too low for four more days of toxic chemicals. "Two things: Number one, you can't start today. Number Two: we have to do something about this."

That "something" we are going to do is called "Neupogen," and apparently it is a very, very expensive drug that is not available to everyone, and only given to patients in extenuating circumstances. My oncologist has to write a letter of request to the Ministry of Health and I have to fill out a Trillum application in order to get this drug. It is so expensive that it prompted my dear friend Joan to ask, "Why the eff is it so expensive? Is it made out of magical sea horses or something?!"

And the answer to that is yes.

Neupogen is a magical sea horse needle that I will have to give myself for ten days after each round of chemotherapy. It is used to treat "neutropenia," which is basically the hematological disorder also known as "low neutrophils," a type of white blood cell which fights bacterial infection. Chemotherapy does a number on the bone marrow; it slays away the white blood cells, along with the red blood cells and the platelets. If you don't have white blood cells, your body is unable to fight off infection. In extreme cases, such as the ones emergency room doctors sometimes use as examples in order to scare patients who just want to go home into staying in the hospital longer, this can result in death. That is a very crappy situation. Enter magical sea horse needle. Neupogen stimulates the rapid production of the white blood cells. Hopefully, this will mean fewer infections and a lot less of the hellishness for me. Hopefully also, it will mean more eating. I miss eating. I am so sick of doctors getting on my case to do more eating. Earthy is counting my calories, and it makes me feel like it's 1992 (seriously, who has counted calories since the Nineties?), and kind of also makes me feel like I am in trouble all the time. We argue about how many calories my applesauce has. I want to eat! I hate Boost! It's disgusting, and it only comes in three flavours!

Could Neupogen be the answer to my hopes and dreams of getting through this alive? I have heard that one of the possible side effects of this magical needle is "horrible bone pain," (Oh, fantastic! When can I get it?) but my fingers are crossed for bone pain-less magical sea horse wonderfulness.

I hope so. Next week, you might find me lighting candles and playing "Let's Get it On," and waiting for my white blood cells to procreate.

No more ceremonious tomb-like nerves, no!