T.M.I.

You have been warned.

I don't think I can avoid acknowledging this unfortunate truth of cancer treatment any longer: chemotherapy and the human digestive system are not designed to get along.

Under normal conditions, one might compare the digestive system to a dimmer switch. There are a variety of settings, and while some are a little harsh most are reasonably tolerable. Once you start chemotherapy, however, your variable dimmer gets replaced with a mostly dysfunctional bi-polar on/off, and your poor digestive system starts to operate on two settings: Setting 1 is "Gee, I don't remember eating a bag of concrete, but I guess I must have"; Setting 2 is what the hosts of Top Gear, with apologies to their Boxing Day audience, referred to as "brown rain" (remember: I warned you). And your poor digestive system basically bounces between these extremes with little rhyme or reason.

Then, of course, your health care provider wants to help mitigate this unfortunate situation so they start pushing drugs. There are a lot of over the counter drugs you can take for a digestive system that only wants to operate at the extremes, but with chemo you're operating at both extremes. And when you add drugs to the mix, pretty soon you can't tell if you're taking this drug to address the actual state of your system or if you're taking the drug to offset the effects of the last drug you took. 

But I think the worst of it is the way the digestive system suffering the effects of chemotherapy starts to communicate with you. Under normal circumstances, the digestive system seems to behave much like the P.G. Wodehouse character of Jeeves, subtly letting you know that nature is calling -- no rush, take your time -- but eventually insisting that you must respond. But once you start chemo, your digestive system transforms from Jeeves to Norman Bates:

"You gotta go" (stab, stab, stab). "No really, you gotta go right now" (stab, stab). "Now!" (stab, stab. stab). So you rush off to the facilities, only to be told "Only kidding" (but stab, stab anyway, just for the hell of it). 

Occasionally I wonder if my surgeon didn't possibly leave a scalpel in my abdomen. A missing scalpel might actually be better than a digestive system that routinely decides to create stabbing pains for no reason. 

So chemotherapy and digestion, not a good combination. But I suppose it could be worse.