private cancer

A lump and a bump did once appear
They came to your neck and moved in for the year
Said, "we dig the neighborhood, don't we dear?"
So make sickly patient your new career.

Bone marrow poking - it's a biopsy craze
reclining in your purple gown for days & days
who knew you could be examined in so many ways?
will you ever escape this hospital malaise?

So, you got out alright, but you've got to go back
Every other week for a chemical attack
They put a tube in your arm and the world goes black
Check it out, you're the leader of the Hodgkin's pack.

Syringes and swabs round a girl so blue
Fourteen shots of Neupogen just for you
A jab in the belly, a wince, or two
Now throw all the used ones in a needle stew.

There are chunks of hair all over your bed
So you're going bald -- what -- you'd rather be dead?
But some jackass asked you why you wore a napkin on your head
Well, would you prefer to do a combover instead?

You can't get enough of this stuff - you want more!
As you lie, dry-heaving on the bathroom floor
Too bad you can't buy chemo at the corner store
It makes you wonder why you ever liked drugs before.

Eight months have made you chemotherapy pro
So onto the next stage you happily go
Gamma rays give your face an unnatural glow
Perhaps if you're lucky, a third arm you will grow.

And now this bizarre journey pretty much done
& you've got party anecdotes guaranteed to stun
The battle with the bad cells, for now, you have won
This year you had cancer. Now wasn't that fun?