i must've written this 3 or 4 times then stopped because, side effects. but today i'm feeling better, so let's begin.
last week i began the first of 6 chemo treatments for my first official recurrence of cancer. i don't write this lightly, nor do i think you read it lightly, it's just sometimes typing it out makes it feel more real. anyway.
here's how it was supposed to go: the infusion would be 2 drugs, one i'd already had (carboplatin) and a new one, doxil. the whole situation was to take 1/2 a day (last year it took all day because i had a sensitivity to one of the drugs, and they had to slow down the drip) at my local suburban branch of a major Boston cancer center. no city traffic, lots of free parking, the whole deal.
as you can infer from that skillful "supposed to" phrasing, it did not go like this. how it went was, i got through the doxil, which takes about an hour to enter the bloodstream. i did not mention that this med is a hella bright orange color, being closely but not directly related to this other cancer drug nicknamed "the red devil." (it may turned my pee orange later down the line, but so far, so colorless).
i breathed a sigh of relief getting through it (you never know how a new drug will react with your body). the next drug was carbo, my old platinum buddy carbo, for 1/2 hour. let's do this, carbo chum! but no. toward the end of the 1/2 hour i spied a rash up and down my arms. allergic reaction.
apparently yes this happens. you can have had carboplatin before and done well with it, but if you stop taking it for a while, your body can build up antibodies to it, and so you can have an allergic reaction to it on the next go round. so, NBD, pop a benadryl now and they'll just slow it down for me next time, right?
not so fast. carbo is serious shit. ok, it's *all* serious shit, but carbo is slightly serious-er? it has mustard-gas derivates, among other things. do not look this drug up on the Interwebs. and do not think too hard about it being in your one precious body. really do not do that.
so, instead of having it take 1/2 hour at my local surburban hospital branch, i will for the next 5 treatments need to go into Major City Cancer Center, and have the carboplatin administered over the course of 12 HOURS. yes. it gets diluted to that degree, in order to prevent another reaction. and i will sit in a room with a nurse who has been assigned to sit with me for the whole 12 hours, watching for signs of anaphylactic shock. NICE. ok, the chances of it happening are not high, but you know, high enough that we have to do this.
it's ok. it's not like there's a pandemic raging around the country.
you'll forgive my snarkiness and not read it as self-pity, please. it's just at times like this i start wondering if all that mumbo-jumbo about curses and vengeful gods might not be so much mumbo-jumbo. and honestly if you tell me that god never gives someone more than they can handle, even if you tell me this in a slightly jokey way, i am going to hunt you down and punch you with my well-learned boxing moves. seriously. i have a right hook that your face does *not* want to meet.
but i *will* do this, i will back up and be grateful.
1. i live near boston which has some of the best hospitals in the world for dealing with what i am dealing with.
2. i have decent health insurance (insane this is even an issue, but, 'murica).
3. despite much of the rest of the country being, as my friend Dan calls it, "stupid with two o's," boston is managing to flatten its virus curve to some degree
4. which means that there is enough medical staff that some poor nurse can sit with me for 12 hours. i'm sorry for her in advance (i am not a riveting conversationalist, and will probably sleep most of the time).
in addition to this little development, i will also be getting a port inserted into my body, in order to make infusions and blood draws, etc. a bit easier on the veins. i've been lucky so far (if you ask me) that my veins have been strong and viable enough as is, my chemo infusions and blood draws infrequent enough, that i could go it without one.
but doxil is temperamental and can wreak havoc with your veins, and havoc = tissue damage, and no one really wants that. so i am going to have a little contraption inserted somewhere near my neck, that connects to a central vein, and medicine from here on in will be inserted this way. i feel different ways about it depending on the minute.
at this minute, i am for the first day in a week feeling mostly human, after dealing with after-effects of doxil and carbo and MY FAVORITE drug neulasta, an immune-booster that most cancer patients are getting now thanks to covid. neulasta can fuck right off, i mean, sure, all cancer drugs can fuck right off, but make neulasta first in line. that stuff makes my stomach feel literally invaded. i will spare you further gory details, but just add two words: bone pain.
this is a long post and i could go on and on, but i'm going to end on this thought i had whilst down on my knees with this recurrence business:
why in the middle of a personal horror show are cancer patients of all people pushed to their knees? they accept (kicking and screaming) the being cut open and injected, infused, shot up with poisons from world war II, accept that there will be side effects and after effects and well, special effects too, effects until it feels like life is one long series of trying to head off side effects...
the truth is we should all be grateful for so many things, but most of us go through life being untouched by The Terrible, and so we forget. I forgot. i guess my feeling is WHAT. WHAT WHAT WHAT WHAT WHAT. WHAT with anger, WHAT with rage, WHAT with fucking everything since March 2019.
i want to stop operating at this speed. NO i don’t mean i want to stop living completely, numbskull. i mean i want the opposite. i’m done being on hold ok?
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