Day minus 1, the real nitty gritty

It's actually early Friday morning, Day 0, but since Patty has been flattened for the last 24 hours, I, Marty, her B team, will give an update of yesterday's activities.
Nausea
Headache
Shakes
Unconsciousness
That's about it.

Now, since I am reporting as an observer, and since I, as Patricia's husband, feel particularly ineffectual through all this, my descriptions of yesterday may be somewhat dark, but I feel it safe to say, whatever I saw, the reality was worse.

Patty's nausea wasn't that morning sickness queasiness that has everyone else in the room smiling, or the nausea after a night's cavorting where you remember thinking "I really shouldn't have had the wine after drinking two cocktails, but it tasted so good with the food" type of nausea. This was her whole body trying to empty out a stomach that had been emptied out during the first 5 minutes of the day, yet continues to clench and unclench, clench and unclench, for hours without end. This is the nausea where a sip of water seems a foreign substance to your stomach, and it responds with gut-wrenching spasms. Nor is her headache the headache of your boss dumping on you when his boss dumps on him, or the kids yelling in the pool, or the music being too loud. This is a headache that refuses to let her sleep. She starts to drift off with the help of drugs, and the headache keeps her just enough in consciousness to know she is still in pain, and still nauseous.
The shakes yesterday weren't vanilla or chocolate. They were her muscles reacting to all the drugs in her system. The nurses assured us these were only slight tremors, and would go away. Only slight tremors. After watching Patty go through the first dose of the rabbit drug, the offhand remark "only slight tremors" is actually reasuring.
Amateur writers tend to overwrite: we try to come up with more exotic or unusual ways of saying or describing things, and we repeat them over and over. One of these phrases often over-used is "blessed sleep." Well, that is a cliche that describes a special type of sleep perfectly. That is the sleep full of wonderful dreams, where the sleeper is smiling and almost purring. That is the sleep where the sleeper awakes refreshed, stretches, looks out the window, ready to go head to head with the world for another day. A sleep that has you feeling you really are blessed.
That is not the sleep of day minus 1. The sleep of day minus 1 is just unconsciousness, if you are lucky enough. It is the body not understanding the onslaught of multiple poisons and toxins that are the treatment for the disease. It is your body telling your mind to try and shut down. In this state of sleep, there are no smiles. I look at Patty's face, and see her eyelids tensed as they attempt to deal with the aching pain in the temples. The edges of her mouth appear clenched to keep from gagging. During the short periods when the secondary drugs do work, her face muscles all relax and her whole body goes slack. For too short a time, I'm afraid. She drifts in and out, not feeling the passage of the time, not interpreting the data her senses are giving her. Trying not to feel.

I remember back to one of our first conversations with Dr. Thomas, when he was discussing treatment options. He said that best case scenario has days and months of hell, followed by cure. This was one of those days.