Part Fifty-Seven: Right on Time

I’ve been referring to it as a sunburn, but now it looks more like a measles rash.  It is a swath flowing from the sun-damaged skin of my neck, covering the upper-right quadrant of my body across sternum and breast until it fades out at my right side just under the armpit.  

Fortunately, it does not itch.  Yet, that is.  But it feels hot and tender, just like a bad sunburn.  Aloe Vera gel helps cool it.   

According to my radiation oncologist, I am right on time with these short-term side effects from radiation.  This is week five, and as her physician’s assistant told me last week, the side effects will gradually worsen until I am done on March 8.  Yesterday she prescribed me a cortisone cream, and it helps quell the discomfort.  So, things really aren’t too bad.  In fact, being right on time (instead of early) with these short-term side effects is nice.   

Counting today (February 23), I have only ten more treatments to go.  I’m getting close to the end of this cancer marathon.  When I’m done, I hope to do more walking and more writing.  I still don’t know how my post-treatment life will pan out, yet there are two things of which I am certain:  it will be different than my pre-cancer life and it will be an adventure because Jesus is my guide.   

Part Fifty-Six: Getting It

            For years I didn’t get it.  In fact, I thought all the relays and pink ribbons were, well, over the top.  I sure didn’t have any interest in breast cancer.

            And then I got it.  Triple negative, stage 3b breast cancer, that is.

            Cancer, no matter the type, is a big deal.  It is the disease everyone hopes not to get.  It is scary and dark and all-consuming.  And it is far more common than I ever knew.

            It still boggles my mind every time I drive into the full parking lot at OCSRI.  More mind-boggling is what waits inside.  People sitting as they wait to speak to an insurance expert, standing in line as they wait to check in.  People sitting in the lab waiting room.  People in the radiation waiting room.  And upstairs, the huge chemotherapy treatment room full of people.  This is one cancer care facility in the city of Tulsa.  One.  Multiply the numbers of cancer patients by some unknown factor that represents all cancer treatment facilities—you may choose in the city, in the state, in the United States, or in the world if you wish—and you start to think about how many people have cancer.

            The other parts about cancer I never got before were how hard it is.  How much cancer patients need the loving, practical support of family and friends.  How endless treatment seems.  How it changes lives physically, emotionally, and spiritually. 

            I never imagined, nor would I have chosen, that I would get cancer.  Now I cannot imagine life without it.  Yes, I am nearing the end of my treatments:  only fifteen more to go.  Then I will enter the ranks of cancer survivors who heartily hope they will never be cancer patients again.  Having cancer has been hard on my whole body.  It has caused all kinds of emotions, both positive and negative, to surface at unlikely times.  It has pushed me deeper in my faith.  I am a better person because of it.

             Now I get it.

            

Part Fifty-Five: Week Three

            As always, the front desk personnel greet me with a smile.  (It only took a couple days before they knew me by name.)  Their friendly banter makes me feel welcomed.  The waiting room has been extra crowded lately, but no matter how busy it gets, they always smile and personally greet each person checking in.  It’s even getting so that I recognize some of the patients.

            There is the man in the wheelchair accompanied by his wife.  He is gregarious enough that I’ve heard his conversations from across the room.  This I know:  he is being treated for brain cancer, and he once lived in San Francisco.  Every day he is balder than the day before. 

            I meet the cheerful grandma, who has very short, curly hair, near the end of her treatments when she and her three-year-old granddaughter plunk down in the chairs next to me.   Across from us are two older women, possibly related; I can’t tell.  The one getting treatment has the sallow skin of someone who has very recently been on chemotherapy.  Her bald head has the very beginnings of hair growing back.  Her anger and depression hang over her countenance like a cloud.  She tells us that she stopped her chemo after only a few sessions because it made her too sick, and now she is starting radiation therapy.

            Across the crowded waiting room I see a white-haired gentleman with an open Bible on his lap.  He is holding his glasses in one hand as he wipes his eyes with the other.  I imagine that his wife is in for one of the imaging tests that are part of the work-up before cancer treatment begins.

            One afternoon as I enter the waiting area, I smell something pungent that I cannot place.  A few minutes after I sit down, still puzzling over the odor, a woman’s name is called.  As she walks past, the smell grows stronger, and then I place it:  the ammonia scent of a too-full kitty litter box.  I wonder how many cats she has and how bad her living conditions must be for her to carry that odor on her clothing.

            I myself am feeling rather low that day, but a pick-me-up is waiting for me down the hall.   From the changing room I enter the radiation room, my hospital gown clutched about me and the hard slab of a narrow table waiting for me to lie down upon it.  The technician greets me with his best maître d' voice, “Table for one?”

            “Yes, thank you,” I reply with a laugh.  He has just made my day.