Drugs

It’s a weird thing is chemotherapy.

I got stuck after that sentence for quite some time. What else could I say? I wanted something to introduce the poem I’d written, but I felt like I’d managed to capture in my 6 words, the oddness and wordless quality that chemotherapy brings. I can’t really explain

it to people who haven’t had it, and those of us who have tend to leave the memories to fade in the backs of our minds. I do anyway. It amazes me how well my mind has allowed me to forget the intricacies of that time, and I’m grateful for it.

Whilst the technology is advancing all the time, my chemo was different to my mum’s five years previously, I always felt that there’s something very Victorian about chemotherapy, like leeching blood, or pills of white mercury. The systemic poisoning of myself, which I willingly entered into, to kill any weaker, cancerous, mutated cells, leaving me cleansed at the end felt gothic, and somewhat fantastical. The drugs intrigued me, and there were so many of them, for all different reasons, so this week it’s about some of them.

F.E.C.

Three oversized clown syringes.

Two brim with colourless liquid

Like a drinking game in bad taste.

Then different, smaller vials filled with promises:

This might make you woozy.

Effects we skirt around, 

Ever British in our fake sitting room,

You might feel a prickle,

You know, down there. 

You might feel nothing. 

Laughing nurses pull me through 

This tense hour of prevention. 

One syringe is red.

Slowly she adds it to

My aching veins; she catches my eye.

Smiling - “Did it make your wee red last time?”

“Like Tizer,” I reply. 

Michelle Holding