Long, Long Ago…

…in a galaxy far, far away, back before I was married, I was dating a 'sweet young thing' who had a bad habit. She smoked.

Now, as an individual, you can do whatever it is that you want to do as long as you don’t hurt anyone else. Hurting yourself is just plain stupid. So, I don’t mind if you smoke. BTW, the World Health Organization's first report on second hand smoke indicated that there was no problem at all. It was later that they pulled that report and became politically correct about the issue of SHS.

In fact, one of the reasons I still carry a lighter is so that I can be a “gentleman” and light the cigarettes of women (and men) who don’t happen to have a light. I just don’t really care to kiss an ashtray, if you know what I mean.

Back to the sweet young thing, one day, she told me that she wanted to quit smoking. So, being a gentleman, I offered to help. I told her that I would hypnotize her so that she wouldn’t want to smoke. The fact that I had never hypnotized anyone else before didn’t stop me. How do I know if I can do it if I don’t try? Besides, I was practicing self-hypnosis at the time; how hard could it be to hypnotize someone else?

So, I hypnotized her and told her that she wouldn’t be bothered by the smell of a cigarette, but the taste of a cigarette would be the worst thing that she could possibly imagine. I also implanted a post-hypnotic suggestion so I could check to see if my attempt was successful.

I brought her out of the “trance” and we continued our day. We sat down to lunch at her place, I triggered the post-hypnotic suggestion, and she got the strangest look on her face. She got up from where she was sitting, went into her living room, and picked up the beaded necklace that she had hanging on a doorknob. She slipped the necklace over her head, and instantly remembered that she had been hypnotized, which had been my intention.

So, we talked about her experience with hypnosis, but we never discussed the reason for the hypnosis. I had implanted the suggestion that she forget that part.

We had lunch and left to go somewhere in my old VW. I loved that car! We got into the car and the first thing she did was shake a cigarette out of her pack. She lit up, got another strange look on her face, and stabbed the cigarette out in my ashtray. She shook another out of the pack, lit that one, and tried a drag on that one. (Do they still call it “taking a drag?”) She immediately stabbed that one out in my ashtray and crushed the rest of the pack in her hands muttering something about a “bad pack.”

Meanwhile, I’m trying to drive while observing her, and trying very hard not to laugh.

She stopped smoking from that day onward and stayed off the stuff for several years. She did eventually start back up again, but that was because I hadn’t anticipated everything that could tempt someone to start smoking again. :-)

But, several weeks afterwards, I asked her about her behavior that day and why she had quit. She said that the cigarettes had started tasting very bad for some reason. I asked her what they tasted like to her, and her one-word reply was “vomit!”

Now, multiply that by about a million times for me. As near as I can figure, the last time I had occasion to vomit was when I was a teen, a very young teen. Even when I started drinking, and not having had any training in drinking—drinking was supposed to be a sin for me at the time, and they don’t train you in sinning—even though I overdid the alcohol thing, I never vomited! There was one time I might have wanted to, I fell asleep sitting up with a waste can between my legs, but I didn’t. I like to say that it’s against my religion.

You can imagine my surprise when I almost “tossed” the first couple of bites of my Hardee’s Sausage, Egg, and Cheese Biscuit on Monday just before chemo. I thought that it was just the way I ate it too fast or something. Or maybe there was something wrong with the sandwich.

So I wasn’t prepared at all for this afternoon when I almost “tossed” one cracker dipped in some freshly made cheese dip.

I’ve always said that I’ve been extremely lucky that I haven’t had any nausea or vomiting at all. So far. Others aren’t quite as lucky.

But my problem lies right in the center of my being. If I ever had to shoot someone, my cancer, my tumor, lies right where I would put the first two rounds, my center of mass. Almost everything that happens within the body is centered on what lies just behind the sternum.

I’ve mentioned the hiccups and the spasms that my radiation treatment has caused. I think things are about to get worse. That area has started to get sore, and kinda tender. I’m thinking that the pain meds are going to start again soon.

But, I’m still maintaining my body weight, and I only have five days of radiation and probably one more round of chemo left. Then with any luck they’ll leave me alone for a couple of weeks and then do some imaging to see where we are.

I’ll let you know how it goes!

Kunolunkwa, y te quiero!

"As a juror, I will exercise my 1000-year-old duty to arrive at a verdict, not just on the basis of the facts of a particular case, or instructions I am given, but through my power to reason, my knowledge of the Bill of Rights, and my individual conscience. When needful, I will judge the law itself." -L. Neil Smith