Signs of the Time

Good Evening Skywriters By Word of Mouth,

recently I've been into putting up signs about the place. Some of this is practical, and others, well, whatever takes my fancy at the time.

I made the mistake of finding and buying a pack of blanks for turning photos into fridge magnets. I also made the very silly step of starting chemotherapy.

So in some cases I've simply been having fun with all of this sign making, and in other cases I need to put up real reminders, warning me of things I'm supposed to do whilst undergoing Chemo.

So here are some of the more practical signs having to do with Chemo.

Here are some rules and warning signs I have to follow. I put this up on my pantry cupboard, making it quite prominent in the kitchen.

One of the most important here is to take my temperature (which I note in my log) and be prepared to drop everything and head to hospital if my temp hits 38 or over. Last week I had an upper respiratory chest infection and that almost triggered the hospital alert - sufficiently that I went and dug out a little trundle-along suitcase, ready for packing.

Another sign I put up is in the dunny. Apparently for a time, the chemotherapy makes my bodily fluids toxic. As I've mentioned before, I'm not sure what this toxicity might do - but is enough for me to get warnings in the cancer documentation and from nurses quite a number of times.

It also changes the way the community nurses, who come and change the dressings on my head, get ready to do that.

They're not always that scary ;-)

And I made a sign to remind them of what to do ...

The last instruction is the most important. Who knows what might happen when I'm toxic? Turn into a giant green angry quasi-superhero?

(Yah know the scariest thing about this image is that I had no idea if such a thing existed. I just typed "barack obama as the hulk" into Google - and sure enough, there they were. Teh Interwebs really do have something for everything and everyone. Now that IS fucking scary!!)

Again a sign like that needs to be prominent, so I put it up above the box of dressings that the nurses use.

Now to the fun that I've been having on the fridge with my fridge-magnet blanks. I've only done 2 so far, and made up another sign on some new photo paper.

 

Here's one that I made using a scan of the warning on one of my Endone boxes.

 

Now that warning is being put to a much better use. Guarding my Chocolate supply ;-) Fuck the champagne, lobster and caviar.

Now here's one that I made today. I've started to make more extensive use of my heat pack to try and control the cancer pain - which seems to be getting out of control again in the last few days.

 

Overall it seems to be working, taking the edge off the worst of it in my jaw, and sometimes I get it right under the dressings close to the cancer itself. I like this shot. I truly am enjoying this moment of Comfort.

Finally I was playing with some new 5 x 7 inch sized photo paper - and it seems great for small durable signs.

 

This is a rip-off of one of the more common slogans that you can buy in new-agey sort of shops, or just really fuckin' tacky newsagencies. It normally starts with "God" but I've gotten into the habit of using "Goddess", just to piss off fundamentalist Christians.

I had one printed on plain paper which actually survived many years of house and flat moves. But a search found that it had slipped into a wormhole and disappeared. So I made this nice pretty new one.

Hmm, there seems to be quite a theme in some of these signs that I'm making. Just don't piss me off at the moment. I dunno what will happen, but I've been going through a shitload of weird stuff - so fair warning. It's not every month that you get a death sentence...

... and you seem to be expected to to take it well. You better hope (I better hope) that the shrink I'm seeing on Thursday is good at her job ;-)