Resentment

It is Week 3.

This is the week I am supposed to feel swell.

The week after the week in which I have to be extra-careful about picking up a bug.

The week after the week after I actually did pick up a bug. And had to spend a day attached to an IV, getting rehydrated. And could not pacify the toxic-waste dump no matter what I ate or drank.

This is the week I am supposed to feel good. Energetic. Able to eat or drink nearly at will.

This is not the week I am supposed to catch a cold. And have a stubbornly runny nose. And a sore throat.

I have plans. I have things to do. Conferences to attend. People to see. Friends coming to town.

I am not in the mood to have a cold or a runny nose or a sore throat.

I am in the mood to feel good and have fun and, while I'm at it, get things done.

I blame the stupid weather. It's been beautiful during the day and excessively cold at night. This has made it very difficult to dress appropriately, and I have shivered my way home the last two nights.

I blame the erratic climate control at the movies last night. I donned and doffed layers throughout the 129 minutes of "Inside Man."

I blame the excessive air conditioning at the writers' conference I attended today. I wore a T-shirt, a suit jacket, a raincoat, two scarves, and a cashmere hat, and I was cold.

I think I have been a pretty good sport throughout this whole thing.

I have sucked up the crappy Week 1's, and I have played it safe and canceled long-standing plans during the iffy Week 2's.

But this is Week 3, and I think I am entitled to a string of unencumbered days, free of extenuating circumstances and side effects and stupid springtime colds.

And I will be very, very pissed off if I have to change my plans. If I have skip Day 2 of the writer's conference. Or our trip to DC for the breast-cancer conference. Or my stint as a volunteer at the Tribeca Film Festival. Or lunch with one of my favorite J-school professors. Or anything else I have planned for this week, including getting things done.

And I will be really, really annoyed if I have to postpone my penultimate round of chemo on Friday. Six days from now, I expect to be able to say that I have just one more treatment left.

And if I can't—if I have to postpone saying it for even one day. . . .

Well, there's absolutely nothing I can do about it.

It's completely out of my control.

And that just sucks.