Finding Chemo

I’ve always enjoyed the experience of walking down a street alone in a place I’ve never been. I like to dip out early morning on family vacations and scout about before everyone’s up. Walking through my first chemo treatment, though, Ron joined me and I appreciated the support.

            Chemo is like two hours at Starbucks with IVs instead of lattes. The treatment room is a spacious, back-office lobby with cushy recliners all around, the kind of chairs you might avoid design-wise but can’t resist when comfy is what’s needed. The nurses are jovial yet appropriately sensitive. They respond to beeping machines on the floor, moving energetically from their workstations behind a large open bar. Behind the bar, they banter and laugh. 

There are big windows and photographs of mountains and rushing streams. There’s a stuffed pink pig on the counter with a sign that says, “Hello, my name is Matt.” There’s a jar of hard candies on the counter and tea and juice on hand. I’ve been enjoying the lozenge shaped berry candies and the buttery creams the nurse said a patient brought in. I think I’ll bring Dad’s peppermints next visit.

The patients are men and women thirty-something to about 75, most with guests. They are calm and engaged. An older woman in a leopard-print head scarf chats with someone who looks to be her daughter; a woman in a knit cap knits; a middle-aged fellow pecks at his computer, feeds himself through a stomach tube, then sleeps and snores. The younger woman next to me wears a chic cool cap and chats softly with her partner.  

It isn’t a depressing scene, and for me, it isn’t uncomfortable. My order was steroid pills, followed by a bag of saline, followed by two bags of medicine cocktail and a shot.

In writing, we talk about good scenes having an emotional shift from the beginning to the end and that was the coolest part. After treatments ended, every sedate patient perked up and left happy. I went home with a book of instructions and prescription for anti-nausea meds forwarded to my pharmacy.

What were the after effects like?  Here’s how I’m processing it.  

A few years ago, my husband and daughter went birthday shopping for me and bought me a 3-inch square magnet that says: “How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?”  I thought it an odd gift and pooh-poohed it at the time, but over the years I’ve come to appreciate the message stuck to my retro dental cabinet in my bathroom.

My twist on chemo would be, “How sick would you be if you didn’t know how sick you are?” And that’s the thing: I’m not sick. The tests show there’s something in my body that doesn’t belong there. The doctor can barely feel it. Before the chemo started, I was 100 percent. Now, after my first round, I’m not sure if I’m feeling the drowsy side effects of the anti-nausea medicine or am I just emotionally drained?  Am I more tired or is this caffeine withdrawal? (Because I have finally kicked coffee.)

            For the most part, whatever I’m feeling is minimal, and I prefer to think “not sick.” My body is being treated, not my mind.