A little over a year ago I started chemotherapy. I haven’t talked about it much around here, but not because nothing happened. I just wasn’t ready yet.
Before the chemo even began, I resigned myself to losing my hair and decided to shave my head rather than leave it lying around all over the place as I shed. I left the beard for the moment. It wasn’t a bad look!
The only problem was that some of the worst people in these Unites States have coopted this look. Here I am the morning of the first chemo treatment, in the bathroom at the cancer center, rocking a special shirt with tearaway sleeves:
Not long after I took that selfie I sat in a comfortable chair, while the Official Sweetie of Muddled Ramblings and Half-Baked Ideas wrapped my extremities in ice packs. This is me, while we waited for the pharmacist to dole out the drugs:
When the medicine arrived, the tech had to put on special single-use hazardous materials gear before touching it. That stuff is dangerous! God forbid it should get on anything before being injected directly into my blood.
I had already been admonished not to share a bathroom with anyone for a few days, for the same reason. I’m sure the city water treatment plants are well-prepared for stuff like this coming down the pipes. (That was sarcasm.)
The precursor drugs all tucked neatly into my bloodstream, the main event began. The tech hung the bag with the cancer-killer goo, pushed some buttons on the transfusion machine, and made sure we knew where the call button was. We were left alone, to watch the drip.
Only it wasn’t very long I started to feel a little tightness in my chest. “I feel tight in the chest,” I said, “Can you…?” was as far as I got before Official Sweetie was pushing the call button. I felt my head taken by a wave of heat. We were right by the nurse station, and they glanced up and suddenly there was a lot of activity around me.
I was red. Alas fair reader, there is no photographic record of my redness; it was not the time for snapping pics. I have since been compared to the classic Kitchenaid red. If you don’t spend time around quality appliances, that is a very deep red.
I was very quickly surrounded by people. The drip was stopped, and the administration of antihistamines began. I’m a little vague on the details of this period. I did not see the tool box set up behind me with a variety of tools for resuscitating critically ill people, but Official Sweetie did.
While a nurse engaged in conversation with me, which was both pleasant and obviously to measure my mental state, more vitals were taken, my heart was listened to and my lungs were evaluated, and eventually the medical professionals around me decided it was ok to start the drip again, but really slowly. My chair would not be ready for the next patient for a while.
The drip had not been going very long when I reacted again, though not as strongly. MY vote was to try again another day with a different medicine, but my vote was worth exactly zero. One way or another, they were going to get that goo inside me.
Each attempt to put the drug in a person is called a “challenge.” Out of curiosity I asked how many times they would try to give me the meds before they gave up. The answer was technically four, but it sounded like the last challenge would go on a week if it had to.
More intravenous Benadryl, a slower drip yet, and on the third try I didn’t react. Eventually they increased the flow to merely slow, and three hours later than planned we were done.
The chemo medicine takes a while to make you truly miserable, so I drove us home. The megadose of Benadryl did not make me even slightly drowsy. I seem to have a special relationship with that drug. In fact, I’m convinced that I’m a little bit allergic to it, but I won’t bother you with my analysis here.
Home. We got there, and I felt all right, but Official Sweetie and I both knew rough times were coming. But those rough times are different for everyone, which makes preparation more difficult.
Maybe sometime soon I will talk about that. It’s been a year, after all.
