Ever think something is really funny until it’s not? Just after my first round of chemo my mother gave me two big tins of ginger cookies (this was just after Christmas). I had picked up some crystalized ginger for nausea and she thought munching on a couple of these with a cup of tea would help too. The ginger still sits on my counter all these months later. I’ve eaten maybe two pieces. One tin of cookies made it back to my daughter’s dorm and the other still sits in my dining room, largely untouched. One day my husband reached for them and I overheard my daughter say “you cant’ eat those.. they are mom’s chemo cookies”. I got a good laugh and some evil ideas. Since that time if there is say.. only one stick of gum left I will say “I need that for my dry mouth” hence our newly termed “cancer gum”. It’s much like drinking the last cold beer on a hot summer day. Nothing tastes better, especially if you know someone else (chemo cookie coveting husband) wanted it. I will sometimes (legitimately) ask the girls not to drink the last ICE in the house. This is a fruit flavored carbonated water with no calories, sugar or sodium that I love and there are days when it’s the only thing I want to drink right after a treatment. Mostly though, nothing is really just for me. It’s all fair game. Until I want to mess with my husband and will claim chemo ice cream. This all got me to thinking about all the products out there sporting pink ribbons and how people will go out of their way to buy them when realistically they do nothing for cancer awareness. Unless when you eat them you feel an overwhelming urge to donate or hug a cancer patient. I mean.. who is not aware of cancer? But.. you have to admit it is marketing genius. Which leads me to mention that if any of you marketing geniuses are reading this and think that’s it! Chemo Cookies! Cancer Gum!.. don’t do it. It would be morally and ethically wrong on so many levels. And also.. if you do, I want a cut.
Cookie?
mainelyhopeful 
I love this blog post. We had a whole lot of that going on in our house, during chemo, also. The other thing I was able to do was to say (when I felt perfectly fine) “honey, would you get me an ice cream sandwich? I have cancer…..” “honey, can you bring the laundry upstairs? I can’t – I have cancer….” – now that the cancer is gone and treatments are over I just change the word “have” to “had” and I still get my way !! 🙂 Hey, you have to use whatever you can during these times……haha.
LikeLike
My husband hates emptying the litter box (like I like it??) and when both the teaching nurse and oncologist told him under no circumstances was he to let me do it, I had all I could do not to jump up and do some obnoxious victory dance. I take great pleasure in asking him if he’s tended to it every night. As soon as he sits down. It’s the little things, really 😉
LikeLike
Ha – totally…you and I must be twins separated at birth !!
LikeLike
Ha…great post, and great comment too Laura. I felt bad one day denying our friends 9 year old my last ginger ale. On bad days it’s the only thing I can drink, water just tastes horrible. Using the cancer card can certainly come in handy. Ginger, oh excuse me, chemo cookies sound great to me….send em over this way, because you know, I have cancer 😉
LikeLike
I would gladly send them, but they are like hard little rocks now. I have magnanimously offered them to the family, but no one will touch them with that awful label attached to them.
LikeLike
Ha ha! What a great idea!!!
LikeLike
My husband refers to my cancer as my ‘trump card’ ~ funny how we all relate to your post!
LikeLike
Trump card! Perfect.
LikeLike
🙂 Trump card even 10 years later! ❤
LikeLike
One of the very best things I found for dry mouth were Werthers candies. Never loved them before , but I do now . I always have a few by my bed.
LikeLike
Full of salient points. Don’t stop bevileing or writing!
LikeLike