Previously on The Murder of Ted…
The weeks of treatment were taking their toll. Exhaustion, weight loss, chemo brain, and a dwindling supply of positivity had me wondering if I had enough fight left for the mission.
This week: Every sleuth has a breaking point. Mine involved cabbage, a little rage, and realizing Ted knew exactly where to push my buttons.
Thank you for joining me on this unexpected, uncozy adventure.
The Murder of Ted
A Series of Unfortunate Events, an Uncozy Adventure
Chapter Fourteen: A Sleuth’s Breaking Point
Every sleuth has a moment when she wonders if the killer may actually get away with murder.
Sunday night was that moment for me. I struggled to keep food down. I ended up vomiting in my mouth five times before I was finally able to breathe normally again and force myself to sleep.
I was done with this diet. I had no fat left. My butt had become a back with a crack. The needles for my peptides were bending as I tried to jab my belly, which was already bruised and abused.
I cried.
How could Ted have gotten the upper hand?
I felt like tapping out. Throwing up the white flag. I was done.
What was the point of all these military tactics if Ted was going to win anyway?
The weeks had been grueling, and the momentum of the fight was taxing. I was tired. I was frustrated and I was hurting.
Monday morning came and instead of more crying, I got angry.
I was trying to make my cabbage wrap for lunch when the cabbage kept tearing making it impossible to create a wrap.
That was it.
I took the chunk of cabbage and threw it at the wall with a fit of rage.
Then I tore another chunk off the head and threw that one too. Plus, a few more. I turned to my husband who patiently let he behave like an animal and said we are going to need a lot more cabbage to get me through this. He smiled not saying a word. He understood my frustration.
I took a deep breath and let the anger leave me. Then I successfully removed a complete cabbage leaf suitable for holding my meager pork salad. I proceeded to finish creating my sad lunch.
I probably shouldn’t have thrown cabbage around. I have to admit I felt a little bit better.
I am sure Ted relished in my fit of rage, and I apologized to God for my behavior.
I needed a mental reset, and weirdly enough, throwing cabbage seemed to be it.
Plus, it’s better than throwing plates. When plates break, it’s a nightmare to clean up all the glass, and they cost a lot more money to replace than a cabbage leaf.
I have never thrown a plate because of that.
So, throwing cabbage felt liberating. Nothing was broken. Just some leaf bits to clean up.
Sometimes you have to play into your emotions to cool them down. At that moment my version of emotional regulation involved vegetables.
The start of the week had been awful for all of us at the cancer table. The negative emotions were piling up.
My husband was my saving grace, and somehow, I was still trying to be there for my friends.
I wanted them well. I was tired of Fred, Ed, Joy, and Nina’s (Jed) winning.
I ratted myself out about my cabbage fiascos and Martha revealed she to, fell into a fit of rage too and threw a loaf of Keto Bread at the wall that same morning.
We all laughed so hard that it made the anger and frustration melt away.
We stood together, and while some of our caregivers weren’t happy, simply because they couldn’t possibly understand exactly what was happening, we regained our composure and set out to fight.
Fight for our lives.
Fight for another day.
Fight with renewed hope.
But the week was far from a happy one. Complication after complication came up.
As if I didn’t have enough trouble, poor Bionic Buddy got dragged into the mess. He was stabbed eight times that week. B.B. was traumatized, even my port was having a rough week.
The nurses couldn’t get him to work. Every day he was jabbed multiple times. Every time they had to reposition him, it burned and I bled.
By Wednesday, I started to panic. I feared I would be going back into surgery and getting him replaced if he was, in fact, truly broken.
As the panic started setting in, one of the nurses told me to take a deep breath. Everything would be okay, and most importantly, Bionic Buddy wasn’t broken. He was just fine. It was just a bad week. Hoping he was right, I prayed. I did not have the energy to go through surgery.
During my IV attacks, in which Ted received multiple cuts via bloodborne attacks, my computer battery decided it was giving up too. When it rains it pours. The nurse was my glitter, she was so kind that she rearranged my chair so my power cord would reach.
They knew how important Killing Ted was and we added redecorating the IV room to my list of events for this week.
My first hyporthermia treatment was a failure too. I only got to 102.8 instead of 104. Dr. Green said it was still a success and told me not to be discouraged since it was still stressing Ted out.
But how can you sit in a 190-degree oven and not get hot?
My body was fighting LW hard.
With all of this drama, I didn’t have the energy to get my newsletter written. I missed its deadline. This was serious for me and it felt like another lose.
Another thing Ted had managed to take from me.
Not being a wimp is hard to do.
The amount of times Ted has told me to give it up, that I wasn’t going to be saved, was too many to count over the last few weeks.
He acted like his kidnapping of me was so well planned that he had nothing to lose.
Maybe the hardest part was that I had started listening. To my everlasting shame, I had allowed his whispers to linger longer than I should have.
Somewhere in the middle of all of this, I had a realization that hit harder than I expected, a confession.
Maybe this wasn’t just about what Ted was doing to my body.
For years, I had fought autoimmune diseases. I had been told by members of the medical community that I was crazy. Eventually, I bought into it.
I developed a hate relationship with my body. I would say things like, “I am so good to you. Why won’t you work?” I had tried everything to feel well and be healthy.
I began to believe that I must be crazy. I developed what felt like a form of PTSD every time a discussion with doctors came up.
I often wished I could just beat this body into shape. I would cry and tell myself the same words. It’s all in your head. You are very sensitive. Blah Blah Blah…
I began to believe anything I felt was fake and that I needed to suck it up. That somehow my body was the problem. I had lived trapped inside myself.
Be careful what you wish for.
Ted knew my weakness and my struggles, just like a stalker or serial killer does and he used it against me.
I cried at the realization that I had done this to myself. More importantly, I felt like I had brought this on my family.
I apologized to God for being such an ungrateful jerk.
I apologized to my husband for allowing this to happen us. I vowed to never treat myself badly again and to always listen, my body was trying to tell me things. I also let go of all the built-up anger and sadness I had with the medical community. How I was treated was wrong but I didn’t need to let that affect me. I could only hope that the damage I had done wasn’t permanent.
It’s hard to admit that you are part of the problem, but once you take that step, things begin to heal.
Maybe God was using these times to help me. He had healed my anxiety around doctors. I now knew that I had been right about my body all those years and that they just couldn’t see what was wrong.
He was also healing my need to plan everything.
Because with cancer, Ted was in the driver’s seat.
I just had to make it out alive, no matter what curveballs he threw at me.
On the home front, my kids woke up to poo streaks along the tile in our house because poor Flynn, our fourteen-year-old kitty, was having problems.
His very fluffy butt was covered in a massive amount of poo. It was stuck all over his hair.
The kids spent the morning shaving and bathing the cat, who now had visible little butt cheeks, and mopping the house before I was supposed to arrive home for the weekend.
Because while I was away fighting cancer, my family was fighting the Great Flynn Poo Disaster at home.
A glimmer of hope, like every chapter has had. I was switched to an AIP Paleo diet. I had lost three pounds of muscle, and my visceral fat had dropped to 1%, dangerously low levels.
Surviving this diet was becoming my biggest challenge. The new diet still sucked and removed even more foods, but I didn’t have to count carbs. It was a double-edged sword, so I took it as a win.
I felt bad for my cancer buddies they received no such blessing and continued to starve.
After Friday’s treatment of lipoic acid, I knew I was having an allergic reaction.
I had asked for Zofran and Toradol at the end of treatment because I was in a lot of pain and feeling like I might vomit. We still had a two-and-a-half-hour ride back home for the weekend.
During that ride, I was in the most pain I have ever been in my life. Worse than childbirth. My veins pulsed with burning pain, my joints felt like someone was smashing them with a hammer, and my heart beat slammed my eardrums with so much force I thought they may rupture.
Once we got home, I could barely stand.
My husband carried me into the house, where my kids greeted me and hugged me tight, escorting me to bed.
I moaned in pain.
“I am going to throw up!”
My husband ran to get a bowl. There was no way I had the energy to move. He got back to me in record time, and I proceeded to violently throw up.
He asked, “Is it time to go to the hospital?”
I said, “Maybe this time.”
He called my doctor and left them a message. By the time he was done, I had started to feel a tiny bit better and vomiting had stopped. However, I did not trust my stomach and it would not receive food or much water for the remainder of the night.
We decided I would be okay, no emergency room trip, but I needed to sleep.
That was how my week ended.
Ted was getting the upper hand or at least, that’s what he wanted me to believe.
Every good sleuth eventually learns something important about herself. Sometimes the case gets darkest right before you find the clues you needed.
I wasn’t ready to give up! If it hurts me, it hurts Ted too. So, bring it on!
Stay tuned for the next episode of Chapter 15: The Eye of Sauron
Ready for a Little Murder? The Fun Kind?
If your idea of a good mystery involves small towns, suspicious characters, questionable decisions, and a murder that stays firmly on the page, let me introduce you to Taryn O’Kelly.
Taryn is a party planner in Silver Springs, Colorado, who has a talent for finding trouble, and, unfortunately, dead bodies.
Luckily, she doesn’t have to figure things out alone. With her best friend by her side, a handsome private detective causing a little distraction, and a town full of secrets, Taryn has plenty to keep her busy.
There’s murder, mayhem, romance, and plenty of small-town shenanigans. And the best part?
Nobody is actually trying to kill Taryn.
Well… usually. 😉
Start with Party Planning for Murder, Book One of the Taryn O’Kelly Mysteries, then follow Taryn through Frost and Foul Play, Cruises, Cocktails, and Corpses, and Sparks, S’mores, and Scandals.
And don’t forget, the antidote to the uncozy is a cozy mystery.
Until next chapter…
Happy reading.
As always, thanks for stopping by for some Salty Inspirations! -Michelle ❤️
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