My mother is dealing with the side effects from an experimental chemo that she received last Wednesday. Experimental treatments are a dual exciting/scary thing. They are exciting because they give a person hope that this might be THE ONE the cures them, or that keeps their incurable disease from spreading further, as it is in our situation. Scary, because the side effects really are unknown. The patient is the guinea pig that the first scientist pricked with a sharp object and observed pain.

This drug works differently from other forms of chemotherapy. Instead of being a masked menace sword fighting with every cell it meets, this baby messes with cell division. If we can't kill it, maybe we can just stop it from getting meaner.

Your mouth, as my mother recently informed me, is a cell regeneration playground. This makes perfect sense, of course. Have you ever noticed how quickly an ulceration of the mouth heals? Well, with this drug playing around with the body's natural functions, my mother awoke Friday morning with Mucositis, a mouth rich in lesions.

The day before, I ate a banana unlike other bananas that I usually eat. See, when I was young, BANANAS were the forbidden fruit. They are very difficult to digest, making them something to avoid at all costs...unless they were overripe. Overripe bananas have the opposite reaction, which made them more valuable than a morning without Clem. I only ever ate a banana if its peel had the appearance of total and utter decay. To this day, I prefer an overripe banana over any other sort. However, since Mom pilfered this fruit from the hospital for my gorging needs, I ate with a gusto.

The back of my tongue did sort of tingle as I ate the fruit. My mouth felt a little scratchy, almost like the banana had a spotty thistle exterior. I thought nothing of it at the time, as I eat rather quickly and enjoy food rather completely, thus leaving no spare room in my brain for secondary thought. Who can think when there's gluttony to commit?

Well, Friday morning, I  awoke with a sore-filled mouth too. Isn't that eerie? I was sure freaked out by this timing of events, even if my family thought nothing more than, "The short one missed a dose of her crazy pills." I avoided almost every kind of acid-laced food that day. This is hard for me. I love fruits, particularly the high acid sort. The sour apples are my favorite...I admire a fruit that bites back, you know? It lends credit to moxie, and being that we are what we eat...well, you see where this is going. I tend to consume foods with what I determine to be high moral fiber so I don't have to worry about the pesky details of honing my character. It makes life easier.

I feel at ease swearing like a sailor as long as I eat a grapefruit afterward.

Anyway, come Saturday, I was missing the sour stuff. My mouth felt a little better, so I feasted on the acid I so craved. I did the same yesterday—I even had popcorn! The tomatoes and apples left claw marks embedded in the interior of my cheeks. The popcorn was just an irritant that scraped and, well, irritated. Smart move, Chickie.

So, here I sit, hoping that nothing amuses me enough to crack a smile and humbled at the discomfort my mother is feeling, for it must be much worse than my self-inflicted mess. From now on, I refuse to eat a banana isn't on the verge of spoil.

Of course, if I were my conspiracy theorist brother, I'd wonder if the hospital, the place of origin for the banana of purgatory that marauded my oral cavity, made me sick so I'd have to get treatment, thereby giving them my money. But that thought didn't even enter my mind. Nope, not at all. That just sounds crazy.