We Have Chemo

A week or so ago I heard Bobbie talking on the phone with a coworker.  It was one of the many times over the last few months I sat listening while she explained to someone she had cancer.  But this time something different came out.  "Yes, so I have chemo." she said.  She meant "I have cancer." of course, but it came out "chemo".  It sounded funny but as it sank in it made a lot of sense why she would make that slip.

The strange thing about finding out you have cancer, at least in Bobbie's case and from my perspective, is you naturally become enveloped in a cloud of doom and despair.  But when the cloud clears, you still feel as normal and as well as you did before the doctor gave you the fateful news.  I saw the confusion grab onto Bobbie and it's grip led to many conversations containing phrases like "How can I have cancer, I feel great?" "There is nothing wrong with me, yet somehow I have cancer."  This goes on for a while.  The confusion escalates and sadly no answers come.

Then, they start treating you for cancer and you become a cancer patient.  I doubt there is anything more confusing in all of medicine then chemotherapy.  I read a book called Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies, and it is most certainly that.  But the idea of squeezing large vials of poison into someone's body is just hard to get your head around, and maybe I won't be able to until we come out on the other side . . . when all that poison has gone in and somehow Bobbie is better because of it.  My guess and assumption is that she will never quite be the same, but seeing her better will probably help dilute the disgust and distain I feel for chemotherapy right now.  

Every doctor and nurse we have met with has told us that while there are some inevitabilities of chemo treatment, each person will endure different side effects.  Let me briefly describe what we have experienced . . . For starters, a lot of puke.  For two weeks I followed my wife back and forth from the couch to our bed carrying her little bucket to puke in and a box of tissues so that she could clean herself up afterwards.  Great crashes in energy.  After a couple hours of moving around or sitting and chatting, instantly asleep on the couch.  For hours.  Bathing herself is out of the question due to her weakness and unexpected panic attacks (yes, I agreed to wash her back).  Nausea, crushing headaches, sore legs and feet, and for the gal that sleeps with the window open in the wintertime, she now needs two pair of socks, a hat, sweat pants and shirt, four blankets, and a space heater on high.  Depression, sudden bursts of tears, random heart palpitations and a scary loss of concentration-known around here as chemo brain.  After the initial crashes, she cannot sleep at all.  Canadian doctors seem much more reticent to prescribe sleeping pills,  but only two or three hours of sleep must be counterproductive to someone trying to stay strong enough to battle cancer . . . and chemo.  And the hair.  Not only does the hair fall out as advertised, but apparently it hurts too.  She has described it as feeling like each hair follicle is individually being pulled out, and we have to find the softest clothes because the touch of anything too coarse can be a source of pain.

"I don't care about the hair.  If I cared about the hair, I would be getting a fucking wig."   

That is what she said to me the other night.  Besides the pain, she doesn't care about losing her hair . . . only that it more than anything says to her and to everyone else that she has cancer. So, chemo makes you feel numb and sick and it makes you lose your hair, and going through it screams to you "YOU HAVE CANCER".

So that is why saying "I have chemo" makes so much sense.  You have cancer but you feel normal and fine.  But when you "have chemo" you're miserable and your life sucks.  There have been some good moments and almost some good days.  We look forward to and are hopeful for more of those.  When Bobbie feels good, she spends some quality time with the kids and responds to some of the 551 unopened emails she has.  As always, we will make the most out of  the times she feels well and have an eye toward the time we can put cancer, and chemo, largely behind us.