Part 12
"Where Is Everybody??"

This week was going by a little faster than the first week. I guess I was getting a little more used to the process. Either that or I was just sleeping a lot more when I was there. That week I only threw up a couple of times. Not bad. All of the usual side effects came back as the week went on. My tongue turned colors from pink to white. That meant that a food tasted bad. I was always a little queezy after a day of chemo. My eyebrows slowly started to fall out, along with all of my "other" hairs. Now at first, I thought the bald look might look good on me. After all, Stone Cold Steve Austin and Jay Buhner were famous for there bald looks. But once your eyebrows start falling out, you look more like an alien than a wrestler. This doesn’t do much to boost your self-esteem. In fact, whenever I went out in public I always wore a hat to cover up my alien looking face. Since my moral was at kind of a low point, I was in real need of some support from my friends. As I would sit in the IV room for 8 hours I would just wish that someone would come in and visit me. Just for a minute. The only problem was, not too many people came. During my entire 12-week chemotherapy treatment, I think only a dozen people (that’s including family) came into the IV room to talk to me. This is pretty bad for "the guy who has SO many friends". I don’t think anyone knows (who hasn’t lived it before) how it feels to live like that. To be in a tiny room for 8 hours a day. To have no hair on your body. To be so sick that you vomit as much as you take a leak. And it doesn’t do any better for you think that you don’t have any friends who care enough to visit you while you’re in such a bad state. Now I know that people have things they have to do throughout the week. I mean, some have work, some have school, and some have kids they need to take care of. We all live busy lives. But as I was sitting down in my chair, watching the bag of chemotherapy drain into my veins, all I could think about was "is it that hard for someone to take the time out of there day to come and keep me company?" Now, I am not saying that I am mad at anyone that did come during that time. But I think a little more of the people who did come and talk to me. I can’t thank them enough for spending their time to sit and talk to some sick, alien looking guy. I am half tempted to just name off the few that made it, but I won’t. They know who they are. I will name two girls who spent a lot of their time in the hospital with me, Alison and Kelly. Every so often, one of these girls would come into the room. Sometimes we would just talk. Sometimes we would watch a movie. Sometimes I would fall asleep and they would just sit there and do homework or something. It felt so good to wake up and see someone sitting there with me. "Thank you" to all that came!

I remember that some of my long time friends didn’t even call. I didn’t hear from them the whole time, but I am sure that they knew. I know that if one of my friends had cancer and was going through chemotherapy, I would do everything I could to find time to let them know that I cared. I saw a lot more friends at my "Benefit Concert" (I’ll talk about that later). Sorry, if after reading this article, you think to yourself "doesn’t he know that I had stuff to do?" Well, if I had died during that time, a lot of people would have missed out in letting me know that they cared. Because when it is all said and done (this goes for all things in life), people don’t remember what excuse you had for not doing something, they just remember that you didn’t do it.

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