Ground Control To Major Crazy

We're all familiar with the book title, "Men are from Mars, Women Are From Venus," right? Women evidently emotionally land on Venus at some point in their lives, but as teenage girls I have learned they travel to a planet that is not shown by any styrofoam ball display at the school science fair. It's called Planet Crazy Person, or PCP, as in the hallucinogenic drug.

My lovely wife Joy and I currently have two residents of PCP visiting with us. Although they look like normal, sane inhabitants of Earth, their actions, words and delusions are evidence of their other-worldly origins. As proof, may I offer an example of their inability to comprehend normal conversation, or their outright hostility to what you and I might consider a genial question. The other morning I asked the eldest alien, who in Earth years is 15, what she wanted for breakfast. Her response: "I don't eat breakfast." Considering the fact that just the morning before she consumed 80% of the available food at Denny's, I thought I had misunderstood her. "You're not hungry this morning?," I asked with a caring, loving lilt to my voice. "Dad! I don't eat breakfast, you know that. I'm not hungry until sometime after lunch, plus I'm cramping, and I need to go to the mall because I have nothing to wear, and we never have any food in this house, and I can't believe you're making me go to that thing next summer, and yes, I AM going to fail my open book health test today, so stop asking me about it!" I can tell you from experience that if I had spoken to my Venusian wife that way, the castration team would be notified immediately and our house would serve as the antithesis to the theory of global warming. Yet, those populating PCP seem to find this incoherent babble as normal, for just 10 minutes later I'm asked, "So, what's for breakfast? I'm starving!"

In viral fashion this behavior is passed from the elder alien to the youngest. While her mouth hasn't yet learned the fluidity of insanity so perfected by the pack leader, her distortion of baths, showers and appearance of hair more than make up for that deficiency. At 9:15 on a night prior to school, the youngling decides that a shower must be taken to prepare the hair for the ordeal of the morning. By 6:45 the next morning, the effects of the evening shower have evidently faded, as another shower commences. By 7:35 more water is heard pouring forth, this time in tub-form, as at 7:34 it was decided that legs needed shaving, something that supposedly wasn't possible during the combined previous 60 minutes of showering. As water tables lower and aquifers dry, it has become apparent to astronomers that water is the most plentiful item on PCP since it is used without regard on Earth.

The good news is, due to eons of dealing with these visitors (those of the cloth tend to refer to them as "the possessed), parents have devised remedies, or at least calming treatments, for the creatures. Aggressive therapies involve signing parental consent forms to enlist in the Armed Forces at age 17. Some emotional mothers have a difficult time with this option and have come up with something gentler, yet far more expensive. It basically means giving them what they want, as you would a horrid beast who is demanding tribute so that you may pass. As Joy says, "they have wild emotions whose only salve is the sheen of a credit card."

Aside from government-like spending or dispatching them to Paris Island, advice and words of hope may help those of you who have found yourselves outmatched in your own home. Time is their enemy. If you can simply wait them out until they're 18, two things will happen. They'll either move to Venus, or move out. Meanwhile, may we suggest a membership to a wine club?

The Treatment Room

This day seemed a distant destination so many months ago. It was like the last few pages in a text book you're forced to read in a class you desperately don't want to take. You hold the book in your hands, feel the weight, examine the thin pages with the puny writing, and think there's no way you'll ever finish. But through plodding, griping, determination, cursing, praying and crying, those last few words in this horrible book are now, at this very minute, within my wife's sight.

Today is the day of my wife's last chemotherapy treatment. In fact, I'm writing this about 4 hours into the infusion as she's beginning to drift off for her second nap. The whole process of switching out bags of various chemical toxins takes about seven hours. It's the eighth and last time she'll spend those seven hours in a vinyl recliner, set amongst the other twenty five in the room. From the bleachers where us non-combatants sit, it all looks so straight forward and harmless. But a few things belie that notion. Buzzers beeping. Nurses bouncing from one patient to the next. Spouses and friends sitting across or beside their loved ones as clear tubes drip clear poisons into the body. Held hands. Blankets pulled tight to drawn faces. It all makes the DMV look like not such a bad place after all.

Yet rising above the purpose of this place and the reality of it's guests, are qualities which hopefully help to balance the fear and lonesomeness that many of the patients surely feel. For it is from some of the patients themselves, those who bear the weight of the drugs and disease, that warmth and openness most freely flow. You'll see it when patients acknowledge one another with a brief, knowing smile. Or when, without hesitation, a complete stranger in the recliner to either side leans in to my wife to ask her how many treatments she has left, what kind of cancer she has, how she's feeling. For me at least, I found reassurance in those encounters. Despite that fact that Joy had already been put through the cancer wringer for four months prior to her first round, chemo still seemed like something that the real cancer patients went through, not my wife. Yet here was a stranger who seemed so comfortable with it all, exuding a confidence that stems from the realization that the battle can be won.

To clarify, all of this is easy for me to say. I'm just the by stander, the support team. I'm not leaving here with a needle jammed into the port in my chest that will continue to pump toxins for two days after I leave. I certainly won't feel the effects that have slowly built up in her body for the past four months. I feel the fear and worry, but in no way can I feel it like she does. But as the other half of our marriage, longing for the better half to be better again, I'm just thankful that this part is over for her. And if finding hope, kindness and friendliness in this most unlikely of spots helps her, or even me, to see the other side of this ordeal, then I'm thankful we sat there among those who shared it.