9:30 A.M. I didn’t want to get onto the elevator. Then I didn’t want to walk down the hallway towards the treatment center doors. When it comes to chemotherapy, I can’t overstate the nervewracking knowledge that you’re being caught between a rock and a hard place. On a fundamental level, every cell in my body is telling me to RUN THE OTHER WAY because THE MEDICINES ARE POISON. At the same time, my sentient, higher-brain functions are telling me GO GET IT DONE OR ELSE.
These two themes grated against each other in my brain, like two musicians trying to forge ahead with a duet when each of them is playing in a different key. At the same time, there was also a descant floating high above that discordant mess: pure blind faith that the treatment will work. That’s the part of the ‘music’ I focused on, it moved my feet, and got me through to check-in.
9:45 A.M. One of the oncology nurses took my vitals. We discovered I’m still hovering around ten pounds more than when I started this process, but my temperature remains steadily normal. Also, this time, my blood pressure didn’t set off the ‘OMG-halp-her-NAO” alarm. That shocked me, to be honest. The weird chemo soundtrack was still grinding along in my head, ramping up my nerves, so I fully expected my blood pressure to be high.
11:00 A.M. The oncologist ran her questionnaire, I consulted my notebook for relevant details, and then she concluded with her poke-and-prod. She told me that my liver panels look ‘even better’ than the last time they checked them, and my lungs and kidneys seem to be doing just fine. This news relieved a great deal of my anxiety. Because I have Crohn’s Disease, too, I take far more daily medications than most people my age. Therefore my filtration system already works overtime. So far, miraculously, so good. This also means, because everything’s okay, I can add another helper medication: Pepcid to make taking more Advil more comfortable.
The other noteworthy news is that I’m probably stuck with these extra ten pounds for the duration of chemo. The doctor surmised the steroids are to blame, and I realized she was probably right. In addition to the jitters and insomnia, I’ve also been feeling that constant urge to eat – just as I did when I was taking prednisone for the Crohn’s. Is this good news or bad? The doctor isn’t worried, especially if the nausea intensifies and I’ll need extra encouragement to eat. I don’t like it, though. It’s one more concession to the unnatural state of current affairs.
Noon-ish onwards. Steve and I got the private room at the end of the corridor, just across the hall from a restroom in fact, so I thought I would sleep the time away again. Not so. For whatever reason, I spent the four-ish hours restlessly – seeing quite a bit of that restroom, in fact. I suspect it was residual nerves. Otherwise there was not much different this time around. Then again, in retrospect, the hours blurred together just like before.
5:00 P.M. The nurse put the Neulasta/Borg implant on my arm, we all watched it intently to make sure it deployed, and I was done. Right around that time I realized that I wasn’t – I hadn’t been – nervous about the treatment itself. The port makes everything easy. The nurses make everything comfortable. Steve’s presence makes everything just plain better. The part of this process that is truly difficult, that fills me with dread, is what comes after. That was my main takeaway from round three: chemotherapy is a mental game about managing expectation and anxiety with more diligence than medication. I don’t know why that realization knocked me sideways, but it did.
medicinal sausage 