MOULTRIE, Ga. — After I had gone through five months of chemotherapy getting ready for a stem cell transplant without any significant side effects, I thought maybe that would be the case when I got down to Mayo Clinic for the big event. I was wrong. Big time.

There is nausea and there is mutant ninja nausea. At Mayo, they gave  me a chemical called melphalan. It’s very high octane stuff designed to kill the bone marrow. Extreme nausea is a byproduct.

One morning I told the nurse to just shoot me and get me out of my misery. Of course I was just joking. At least that’s the way I see it now.

I had never been that nauseated before. To put it in layman’s terms, it was about “grab hold and hang on.”

So as I was riding around the county the other day, enjoying the blue of the sky and the green of the trees, I tried to remember the closest I had ever come to having that kind of nausea before.

Then came the flashback. I was about 12 years old, and we were planting tobacco beds near my grandpa’s house.

About midmorning he sent me up to the house to fetch something for him. 

As I walked through the kitchen I looked on top of the hot box of grandma’s wood stove, and there sat four or five cans of Honey Bee snuff. I guess the little angel that’s supposed to sit on one shoulder and rebuff the little devil that sits on the other shoulder was taking a break.

Grandma and grandpa dipped snuff. And I had often wondered what it was all about. I had no older brother to teach me about such things. And neither of my sisters dipped. I had never really paid attention to the process when  grandpa would pack snuff in his lower lip.

It smelled sweet, and so I figured they had been holding out on me. I turned up the can and poured about half of it in my mouth. Then I tried to chew it. Well it was not sweet, and you don’t chew snuff I quickly discovered. 

I was choking and gagging. I ran into the back yard and was trying my best to spit it out. Struggling not to pass out, I started drawing water from the well at the end of the back porch to wash it out. And I was pretty sure there wasn’t going to be enough water in the well. 

At some point shortly afterward, the earth started tilting. There was one moment I remember being on my hands and knees out in the yard, dry heaving. At one point I recall actually being under the back porch. I think I may have passed out for a brief moment. I remember lying flat on my stomach and clutching grass with both hands. With the earth tilting, I was afraid I was going to fall off. 

At some point I was able get up on my shaky legs. When I got back to where the grownups were, grandpa asked me where was his snuff? Then I remembered why he had sent me up to the house.

I’m not sure if that episode was the reason I chose to avoid using tobacco products as I grew older, but if it was then I guess that brief case of extreme nausea and my new perspective of the cosmos was worth it. As well, I’m hoping the nausea I endured during my Mayo adventure will also result in very positive effects.

By the way, my nurse was named Amy. And I don’t think she would have shot me anyway. When the fog cleared, she and her team had taken really good care of me.

(P.S.) Given the snuff incident, there is some irony that green is my favorite color.

 (Dwain Walden is editor/publisher of The Moultrie Observer. Email: dwain.walden@gaflnews.com)