7:30 A.M. We arrived before the offices opened and hovered in the hallway. Steve was lugging my backpack because I couldn’t carry heavy things: I had fresh incisions in my neck from getting a port implanted, and anesthesia/percoset still swimming through my veins. I was weary, drugged, and just plain scared. I wanted to be home in bed. I wanted to be anywhere but where I was headed, yet I had no choice.
8:00 A.M.ish. I was freshly weighed, measured for height, and squeezed/pinched for vitals. My labs looked good. The oncologist went over my list of medications which has stretched to two and a half pages: Now I’ve got steroids, pain meds, and three new anti-nausea prescriptions to wrangle in addition to everything else. It is daunting, and I think my dread must have showed on my face. After the doctor gave me detailed instructions on how and when to take the new drugs, she leaned forward and took my hand. She looked me dead in the eye and instructed me to call, anytime, about anything. In essence, she’s got my number: I’m a stoic and I don’t like to ‘bother’ people. That has to change, too.
8:30 A.M.ish. My ‘room’ for the day was a padded reclining chair upholstered in pink vinyl surrounded by ombre green and blue curtains that remind me vaguely of the Caribbean. My nurse Paula was cheerful and helpful without being too extroverted. Steve lowered himself somewhat cautiously into the patient’s +1 chair and gave me a wide-eyed look of happy surprise. I leaned back into my seat, my feet left the floor, my head hit the pillow: instant comfort for me, too. Paula hooked me into the port to start with Benadryl and Atavan, and I started to float away on pleasant weightlessness. The lucid part of my brain registered, with awe, that no one had to dig around in my arm with an I.V. catheter to deliver that chemical bliss. My body started to release stress I hadn’t realized I was carrying – from my neck, my upper shoulders, all along my locked-up spine. I fell asleep. I fell asleep.
Sometime later. The tech had to shake my wrist to wake me up and take more vitals. Steve had been to Clover and brought me a chocolate croissant. I gobbled it down, curled up my legs, and fell back to sleep with crumbs on my lips.
Sometime later still. Steve looked up from his laptop and watched the nurse take more vitals, as we exchanged a look of shared relief and amazement. I realized too how scared and nervous he was, that he doesn’t like hospitals any more than I do. But he was fine: he had his work laptop on his knees, he was steadily typing away, and his face had fallen into his serene resting-focused-face. I curled up on my other side and went back to sleep once more.
Noonish. I woke up for real when Paula came in to swap out some of the medication bags. She told me we were almost done with the infusion. Steve went out to retrieve some lunch while Paula and I talked strategy: which food in the patients’ kitchen I can eat, which clothes I could wear next time to be even more comfortable. I heard someone in the next ‘room’ say, “I’m here to give you reiki.” I peered around the curtain and discovered that the hospital recruits reiki masters to give free treatments. The hospital does this. Amazed and thrilled, I asked if the master had time to do me next. She did. She had the slender hands, the posture, and the easy manner of someone extremely proficient with her gift. Plus, after Steve returned, she had enough time to give him an energy boost as well.
2:30 P.M. Paula disconnected me from the I.V. stand, gave me fresh dressings on my port incisions, and taped a squarish white plastic device to my upper arm. We stood there as she eyed her wristwatch and explained how the device worked: it contained the last intravenous medicine I would need, an antibiotic that needed to be administered at a very specific time the day after chemo. There was an audible ‘click,’ I felt a little snapping pinch like a fingertip lancet, and a green light started to blink. “Success,” she said, with a smile. Not only was my treatment for that day completed, but thanks to the device on my arm, I wouldn’t have to drag myself to the hospital for a third day in a row.
In summary. I feel confident saying that anticipation is, hands down, the most hellish part of having cancer. From the moment you learn you have it, you are expected to wait for one thing after another. You wait to take the tests that define the kind of cancer you have, how far it has spread, and what kind of treatment you need. Then you wait to start treatment, giving your brain ample time to imagine the worst. Even now, after I had a completely bearable time getting chemo, part of my brain is reminding me relentlessly that the next two days are coming. I can’t shut it off or blow it off–it is telling me the truth. So I have to consciously construct another partitioned area in my mind where I can counterbalance all that worry with equally true facts: the drugs I have to help me, the advice I’ve gotten that helps me, the reiki, the comfy chairs, the kind and knowledgeable support staff, the doctors who continually amaze me with their efforts to shore up my mind and my body. Today, as I wait for tomorrow, that’s my task.
medicinal sausage 