One More Thing (Hair, Part 3)

I know I said the blog was finished, but I had to post this photo of my inspiring friend Lauren... who just donated her beautiful long hair to a wig program in my honor.

This picture of the short-haired girls was taken at the Academy Ball in January. For photos of Lauren pre- and mid-cut, check out: http://picasaweb.google.com/L.A.Saul/TheBigHairCut#
Her hair was long enough to donate six eight-inch ponytails to Pantene's Beautiful Lengths program: http://www.beautifullengths.com/en_US/makethecut.jsp

Thank you, Lauren!
###

Click Here to Read More...

From Gills to Gossamer (AKA The Year That Wasn't)

“We lived to die another day.”
--Jack Nicholson in The Bucket List

It has been almost a year since a doctor in the Caribbean told me I might have an infected gill. It was funny at the time, this idea that after so much time on the water, I might be turning into a fish, or a mermaid, so funny, in fact, that we were still joking about it even when it turned out to be cancer. Hilarious.

Looking back over the past 12 months, I am quite sure that had I stopped laughing, I would not have survived. I am also convinced that had I not documented it, I would not believe any of it happened. The truth is so awful and unbelievable, the story, post-by-post, such a fragile web of surreal detail, it could disappear in a gust of wind, or a quick swipe of the hand. Poof. Gone. A year that never existed.

I am right back where I was in late 2007, on the verge of figuring out how to make more time for writing and sailing while also paying my bills on time, yet the calendar tells me hundreds of days have passed. I’ve missed births and graduations and birthdays and deadlines and God knows what else. I keep saying I feel like I’ve lost a year of my life, but the point is driven home over and over as I reconnect with people I think I haven’t seen in a year, but really it’s been two. Weird.

I look at the photos on the blog and I am also quite sure, happy snapshots notwithstanding, I wasn’t smiling for most of the last year, but hey, who wants to take (or look at) pictures when you’re feeling sick, or weak, or bored, or tired or frustrated? Photos of bald girls getting radiation are creepy enough.

Here are the two most common reactions I got to the blog during the course of the year:

1. I read your blog. It’s so honest.
2. I read your blog. What’s really going on? How are you REALLY feeling?

This makes me think I’m a failure as a writer. I like to think it’s all there, the grim realities and vast range of emotions in between the jokes and funny stories. I tried to be honest and observant, both inwardly and outwardly, and still keep a sense of humor. Perhaps you can never fully tell the whole story.

My surgeon friend, complicit in the Cancer is Hilarious attitude, admitted halfway through the ordeal that she thought a positive attitude was a form of denial. She may be right, especially in circumstances in which the patient is gravely ill and treatments so devastating, they promise only Pyrrhic victories. How on earth do you get through each day when your prognosis is bad and you are almost surely going to get sicker and sicker until you die? I know people who are facing that right now. I don’t know how they do it. I only know that I am not one of them, and never was, and for that I am thankful.

I had dinner with a friend the other night who had a cancer experience this year similar to mine, i.e. a scare, but with a good prognosis and, so far, successful treatment. He said he felt almost embarrassed by all the support, and people telling him they were praying for him. I know exactly what he means.

Sir Ernest Shackleton, the famed Antarctic explorer and captain of Endurance, is quoted as saying that optimism is true moral courage. In that spirit, I like to think that my decision, for example, to color my hair after my first chemo treatment—just in case it didn’t fall out—was not so much, say, vain as positive. Optimistic. But certainly not courageous. Courage is a word for the people with cancer, and their loved ones, who are forced to stare down death on a daily basis. I am in awe of them.

People called me brave but I am not brave. I am fortunate. I got diagnosed with “the good cancer,” had the Cadillac of treatment and turned out to be the Chemo Queen. (“They poisoned her body, but the girl kept eating…”) I am not 100% yet and still have some minor complaints, but they are minor, relatively speaking. Treatment sucked, but it worked. Today I am cancer free and, as it turns out, not even in early menopause after all.

I go back to see Dr. R again in February. He is not the committed relationship I have been longing for, but he is the one I get for now. He has promised to be in my life for the next two to five years, at least. In other relationship news, I expect the chemo vs. sex ratio to improve dramatically in the New Year, if for no other reason than I don’t expect any chemo in 2009.

I expect all the follow-up news to be good. There is, therefore, no more need to write about this. I have more important things to do, like regularly update my status on Facebook. Also, I need to find a (paying) job, and write my book. I think there may also be a few oceans I haven’t seen yet. I may start a new blog (do you see the mental procrastination on the aforementioned already starting?) and if I do, I will post the address on this site. But I don’t expect any new posts here in 2009.

There are so many people to thank for getting me through this year. They range from my Mom who took care of me and cooked for me and worried about me every day to one of my girlfriends who kept calling and offering to come over and clean my toilet because she didn’t know what else to do. I can’t possibly name everyone, and I won’t risk leaving anyone out. If you are reading this, you are probably one of them, so let me just say, simply, thank you. I am overwhelmed by the vastness of my support network and deeply touched by the depths of generosity I have been shown.

I am lucky now to have spent the month in the Caribbean, first on a 15-day sail to the Grenadines, and now back on St. John where I will welcome the New Year with lots of good friends… far, far away from Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. I am ready for this gossamer tale to fade away, banished to the place reserved for bad memories. I’m ready to stop being the daughter/sister/aunt/niece/friend with cancer and go back to being the daughter/sister/aunt/niece/friend who sailed across the Atlantic in a 30-foot boat. (With no engine.) (And no head.)

I still look in the mirror most days and don’t quite recognize myself, but perhaps that is more a product of five years of extraordinary change and experience, a time period which, despite serious illness, heartache, job insecurity, financial pressures and grief, has been the most rewarding time of my life.

In the movie The Bucket List, Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman play two terminally ill men racing against time to complete a list of things they want to do before they die. The one that stuck with me—far more interesting than the parachuting and traveling and mountain climbing—was: Witness something truly majestic.

I am blessed to say I have done just this, not only in the vast and beautiful skies I have gazed up into in the middle of the sea, but also in the shape of the many, many people who have loved and supported me through the whole crazy journey. Which continues.

Here’s to 2009.

###

Click Here to Read More...

Winter Solstice

The calendar says today is the Winter Solstice but I am sure the longest night of my year happened some months ago. I could probably go back through all the missives here and pinpoint a more exact time and date, but why bother? This cancer blog is getting boring which is, after all, the goal. No news really is good news. I think this will be the penultimate post.

My November test results all came back clean. “Beautiful” was the word Dr. R used, which is as good as it gets in a world where people are loathe to use the word “cured.” There was much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving. Mom and I celebrated with turkey and cosmos.

After the holiday, I was lucky enough to fly back to the Caribbean to finish out the year in warmth and sunshine. This morning I’m writing from St. John, having just returned from a two-week sailing trip from the U.S. Virgin Islands to the Grenadines. The voyage, originally planned for last spring, was scuttled by chemo, and worries about fever (and not the John Masefield kind). Delayed but not denied, it was all there waiting: the friend with the boat, the 800 miles of blue water sailing, the tropical winds, the fleets of dolphins and oh, the star-filled heavens. I cried when I saw the sky.

With new saltwater adventures, it’s hard to think about illness. Looking through my year’s worth of notes, I find a few hilarious aspects of cancer I wanted to write about but never got around to, no doubt because some compelling rerun of The West Wing was on TV. Things like:

• Visa or MC? (That call I got the night before surgery, during which the unidentified caller told me what time to report to the hospital, and asked whether I would be paying my $5,000 bill by Visa, MasterCard or personal check.)
• Chemo Brain (Is it my chemically impaired faculties that make it impossible for me to remember I’ve put water on to boil for tea until all the water is gone and the pot is burning up? Or am I just genetically programmed to be a coffee drinker?)
• Pharmacology (Who knew there were so many people in my life with such an acute interest in medical marijuana?)
• Mirror, Mirror (Hair, Part 3) (So I still don’t recognize myself. But whoever she is in the mirror, she’s got great boat hair.)
• Little Victories (I am pleased that I made it through radiation without any permanent markings. Tattoos should be something sexy and exotic you get on your ass, not some blue dot smack in the middle of your chest. The question is: Why did I have to push for the markings to be on a mask instead of my body? Why did I have to find this alternative through my own research instead of the doctor presenting it as an option?)


I’ll save the Big Victories for the next post. Gotta go take advantage of what’s left of the daylight.

###

Click Here to Read More...

Follow-Up

Me and Mom, celebrating good test results!

Click Here to Read More...

The Princess and the PET Scan

Once upon a time, a high-spirited woman went to St. Maarten for a holiday and got herself in a bit of trouble. The nature of the trouble was never mentioned, but suffice it to say she was in sorry need of a knight in any kind of armor.

The hero arrived not on horseback, but by boat. A sailor named Mark hailing from the U.K. but residing most recently in the hamlet of Coral Bay on the island of St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands witnessed the spectacle and bailed the lady out. "She started to go strange and we straightened her out," the modest Mark said with a shrug.

The good Mark's deeds did not go unnoticed. The damsel in distress turned out to be related to a certain Lord Gray (think Earl Gray tea) and Mark was richly rewarded with a title of his own. Thusly, Mark the Sailor became Lord Mark, Lord of Hillborough, Duke of Beltinge. The investiture ceremony was held at Coral Bay's unofficial town hall, the venerable Skinny Legs bar and grill. Most of the locals and a healthy number of donkeys were in attendance.

This story has absolutely nothing to do with me, except that I had the honor of having my picture taken with Mark just days before the Lordship Ceremony, when he was still a commoner, and it's a pretty good shot of what my hair looks like right now. (You didn't forget that it's all about hair, did you?) In addition, I like any story that illustrates the wackiness of St. John. Nobility in Coral Bay! Go figure.

The Tale of Lord Mark is also, I believe, more entertaining than the current reality, which is that I'm back at Jefferson's Imaging Center, getting pumped full of radioactive whatever and drinking the barium sulfate (Creamy Vanilla Smoothie Flavor!) in preparation for yet another PET scan. Three months have passed since treatment ended; now it's time for a week of follow-up tests. Anyone want to ride to the rescue?
###

Click Here to Read More...

Latitude 18˚(The Other Radiation Therapy)

Team Skinny Legs and C4th at the Budget Marine Women's Caribbean One Design Keelboat Championships, November 1-2 in St. Maarten.

Click Here to Read More...

Call Me Ishmael

Ishmael knew it was time to hightail it back to sea when it was damp, drizzly November in his soul. For me, it was when I realized that I knew, without checking the Comcast guide, that the Lifetime network was channel 48 on my cable system, and also that I was highly anticipating the next episode of Army Wives. I’m no Melville, but I know a sign when I see one.

Thus, I am now writing from some of my favorite literary outposts: first a window seat on a US-Air flight bound for St. Thomas, and now, Captain Celia’s home in Cruz Bay on St. John.

This weekend, I’ll be sailing in the St. Maarten’s International Women’s Keelboat Regatta with Team Skinny Legs. In a few hours, I’ll head over to Coral Bay to meet up with the rest of the girls on the team who will, it’s a good bet, not quietly take to the ship. Sorry, Herman.
###

Click Here to Read More...

One Resident, Two Resident, Three Resident, Four...

If you’re being treated at a teaching hospital, time spent in the hilarious world of cancer can be measured in residents. I’m up to five. One for Dr. R, one for the oncologist I decided not to go with (primarily because I spent more time with the resident than with the doctor) and three for Dr. X, who has a steady stream of what appear to be brainy teenagers dressing up as doctors for Halloween.

There was the kind, pretty woman, who got me in my clueless stage last winter, and gently broke the fertility news. There was the earnest, geeky kid who hovered around all during radiation treatment, my freaked-out period, and did his best to answer all my technical questions. Then there was the guy who had the misfortune to be in the office last Tuesday. I am rapidly recovering to my pissed-off, greatly inconvenienced stage, and am back to being annoyed by strangers feeling around my neck and chest, especially ones who not only think they know more about this cancer thing than I do, but also look like jailbait.

I was back in The Basement for my post-radiation follow-up appointment. Since our rendezvous in hell, I’ve been soaking up the salubrious October weather of the Jersey Shore and Dr. X has been vacationing in China. Mini-Me’s poking around made me cranky, but it’s hard to stay in a bad mood once Dr. X walks in. I’ve come to like him, in a Stockholm syndrome sort of way.

Also, all the waiting around affords plenty of time to take in all the people who have it worse than I do—the man on the phone with half his face deformed, the guy who must have some type of throat cancer and is using an electronic device to amplify his voice—i.e., pretty much everybody. My complaint about feeling like there’s a heavy weight on my chest, making it hard to take deep breaths, seems suddenly insignificant. Dr. X says scarring of the lungs is normal. He tells me to keep doing yoga and sends me off for a chest X-ray. I try to complain about the joint stiffness that makes it hard to move my fingers in the morning, but Dr. X is not taking responsibility for that. That’s apparently a chemo gift, a topic for my next date with Dr. R.

It’s still too early for the first full, post-treatment scan and blood tests. That will happen in November. For now, my problems are boring, which is a good sign.

I’m getting a little bored of the blog, too. I do feel the need to wrap things up, but this is proving tricky. I keep thinking I’ll write a final post after the next appointment, but there’s always a next one, and a next one. I thought I was almost done with Dr. X, but he wouldn’t let me leave until I committed to a December date. The ending is elusive.
###

Click Here to Read More...

P.R. for Pirates

This is for those of you who insist on asking, "What's next?" Who knew this was a job?

From The New York Times:

Beware, Sharks. P. R. Agents, Too.

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
NAIROBI, Kenya — It was probably my 50th call. The line had always been busy. Or the phone had been shut off.

But on Tuesday morning, someone actually picked up.

“Can I speak to the pirate spokesman, please?”

Pirate p.r? Strange. Stranger still to be interviewing, via satellite, a band of seafaring thieves bobbing in the Indian Ocean 700 miles away from my table at a sidewalk cafe in Nairobi. These were the buccaneers who on Sept. 25 hijacked a Ukrainian freighter crammed with tanks and grenade launchers, and by last week had the world’s two most fearsome navies, the Russian and the American, breathing down their necks.

Somali pirates may not go for eyeliner like Johnny Depp. But they seem almost as image conscious. In the 21st century, pirates have talking points, too.

Like: “You only die once,” according to Sugule Ali, their official spokesman.

Or: “We see people who dump waste in our waters. We see people who illegally fish in our waters. We see people doing all sorts of things in our waters.” Also Mr. Sugule.

And: “They can’t catch us like goats.” Again Mr. Sugule, who I was told in no uncertain terms was the only pirate allowed to be quoted. Or else.

Mr. Sugule seemed nonchalant. Maybe a touch gruff. I could, I imagined, almost hear a cavalier shrug in his voice.

Not a lot is known about this particular public relations professional. He sounded like he was somewhere between 25 and 40. His band of pirates is part of a group of former fishermen who hijack ships off the coast of anarchic Somalia and ransom them back to their owners, often for a million dollars plus. Mr. Sugule said he was from the central region of Somalia; in a country where the real geography is clan, “central region” is code for the Hawiye clan and most likely the Habir Gedir subclan, which has not exactly thrown its formidable muscle behind Somalia’s fledging government.

“Sugule may not be educated,” my translator said. “But he’s definitely street smart.”

I was given his number by a high-level contact in Nairobi who was involved in trying to bring this drama on the high seas to a peaceful end. In our 45-minute chat, Mr. Sugule educated me on all matters pirate, including what his group calls itself (“the Central Region Coast Guard”) to why he became a pirate (“We are patrolling our seas”) to what they want (“just money”).

I asked Mr. Sugule if he ever went to school. So many young men in Somalia haven’t. The central government collapsed in 1991, putting a whole generation out on the streets, where the only real authority is the business end of a machine gun.

“These questions are getting strange,” Mr. Sugule said. “Call back later.”

Click.

Click Here to Read More...

Salt Water

“The cure for anything is salt water: Sweat. Tears. Or the sea.”
--Isak Denison

I thought my slate had been wiped clean back in May when, halfway through chemo and just after my last scheduled freelance job wrapped up, the second of two rejections for summer writers’ conferences came in the mail. “That’s it,” I whined to Dr. Lisa. “2008 is officially a bust. Every plan or hope I had on my calendar for the year is now either finished or scuttled.” But there was one more shoe to drop.

A few weeks ago, perusing in a bookshop with Captain Celia, we stumbled across a new memoir by a middle-aged woman who quit her job, bought a boat, and went to sea. The title of the book was the same as the working title of my book, the one I was a hundred pages into when I got diagnosed with cancer, the one about the woman who quit her job, moved to the islands, discovered boats and, well, you get the idea. Saying I feel like I’ve lost a year of my life has become a constant complaint, but in that ghostlike moment, holding that book in my hand, the belief crystallized. While I was getting chemotherapy and radiation, some other bitch was writing my book—and getting it published.

Six weeks after finishing radiation, I am, I suppose, beginning to settle into what the cancer books call “the new normal."  My life was in such transition before all this, I’m not even sure there was an old normal. 

This is the first month all year that I don’t have a single doctor’s appointment or hospital visit. Most of my treatment symptoms are abating, although new ones still crop up: Itchy, dry patches where my skin was radiated. Weird joint pain in my fingers. Pressure on my lungs that makes it painful to take a deep breath. In the great scheme of things, they are minor issues, to be sure, but lingering reminders nonetheless.

My day planner—one of those September-to-September ones, corresponding with last season’s orchestra concert schedule—runs out on Tuesday. I vaguely remember thinking I should buy a new one, but so far haven’t bothered. It’s not like I’m scheduling much these days. I am slowly picking up a couple writing assignments, but doing them mostly on my own time, still concentrating primarily on building up strength and energy.

I am fortunate to be doing this at the Jersey Shore, resettling into my condo in Ocean City as the town itself slowly retreats into its off-season pace. We have had glorious fall weather, perfect for beach walks and boardwalk bike rides. The ocean temperature is just right for swimming. I had a great day of sailing on Barnegat Bay last Saturday with old co-workers I haven’t seen in 14 years. We sailed for seven hours in bright sunshine and 20 knot winds; I spent Sunday on the couch. I started taking a Tai Chi class with the old ladies at the community center, and just this week felt strong enough to start lifting weights again (same community center, but with the old men). I can barely keep up with them. After class, I have to go home and rest. I think about that terrible writer who wrote my book and get restless, get up, do a few things, but after an hour, I’m back on the couch, wiped out again. I think about writing, but flip on the TV instead.

Doctor R said expect fatigue. Fatigue is normal. Fatigue will take a long time to go away. If a walk to the beach (one and a half blocks, not to be confused with a long walk on the beach) or a yoga class zaps the last of my energy, well, at least I got a walk to the beach or a yoga class into my day. I sleep like a baby, nine hours most nights, and often wake up, like a cranky child, on the wrong side of the bed. Frustration is fatigue’s constant companion. I am mindful of Dr. R’s warning to be on the lookout for signs of depression, but I don’t think this is depression, it’s more… decompression.

A few months ago, I was having brunch with my high school girlfriends, who are all married. We were talking about long-term future plans. Where do you see yourself in ten years? The one without kids was about to move to a new city, with all kinds of unknowns and exciting opportunities in front of her. But the ones with kids—all school-age now—pretty much know where they’re going to be for the next 10-to-15 years, with raising their children and putting them through college a priority.

It struck me, acutely in that moment, that I have this same period of time, completely free of liens. Through the haze of cancer-induced anger, and envy and longing for the babies I don’t—and now can’t—have, there was a glimmer. I caught a glimpse of tabula rasa as gift.

While it’s still too foggy to see it all clearly, I think I can capitalize on this alleged silver lining as justification for further inertia. If this has all been one giant transition, leaving me with a blank slate and, as a favorite co-worker once said, “nothing but open doors,” then it’s probably best not to rush into any of them. I don’t think I’ll bother seeking out a calendar for the rest of 2008, the year that wasn’t. I have worked hard. I have cried. It must be time—again—for the sea. From my spot where I am treading water, I can see the shore. I see all the people who have helped me through this, cheering me on. I know I can swim, just as soon as I’m ready. But my head’s above water, and I like the view from out here. And the water is so warm.

Click Here to Read More...

Cancer Vixen

http://www.randomhouse.com/knopf/cancervixen/

Click Here to Read More...

Limbo

I woke up this morning to find my underwear on the kitchen table, right next to the bottle of tequila.

The Jose Cuervo was unopened; the party’s not until the weekend, when my college girlfriends come to visit. But after a morning visit to the doctor and a couple of afternoon errands, I was so wiped out when I got home yesterday, I apparently couldn’t even make it to the bedroom. I dropped the bottles on the counter, peeled off half my clothes right there in the kitchen (because I’m hot, and then I’m cold, and then I’m hot, and then I’m cold) and collapsed onto my couch for four straight hours of Law and Order. It is possible, I have recently discovered, to watch Law and Order almost incessantly, day or night.

This fatigue thing was first on my list of things to ask Dr. R about at our appointment yesterday, along with the flu-like aches, weird joint pain in my hands and extreme temperature swings. I had had a little burst of energy after my final radiation treatment, feeling great while I was sailing on Cape Cod for the weekend, and even during my first few days back in Philly, but after five days, I crashed.

I also needed to know what my follow-up care would be. How often will I have to get PET/CT scans and blood work in the years ahead?

To my surprise, Dr. R’s first concern was something completely different.

“Your tests are good, your blood work looks great. What I really want you to be on the lookout for now,” he said, “are signs of depression. Everybody wants to celebrate because treatments are over, and you look good so they think you feel good, too. But it usually takes three to six months to really start feeling better. Some people say it took a year for them to feel ‘normal’… whatever the ‘new normal’ is.”

Dr. R handed me tissues before I even realized my eyes were welling up.

“Everybody keeps asking me what my plans are now,” I said. “Jesus, I’m exhausted.”

I have discussed this with a few friends in recent weeks. One suggested I might be experiencing a little bit of survivor’s guilt. God knows I have seen countless people in the last eight months much worse off than I am. And of course I am grateful that my prognosis, my care, and my support were the best imaginable. And yes, I know that soon enough, I’ll be back to work, and things will be back on track. Relentless optimism takes a bit of a toll along with the treatment.

My first instinct is that the survivor/war analogy is a little extreme… but then I remember that all the cancer books use war analogies. Your body is “invaded” by “hostile” cancer cells. Chemotherapy and radiation are your “armies” designed to “attack” the invaders. During the fight, lots of good guys get killed. Whole platoons of healthy cells are victims of friendly fire.

“I do feel a little bit like a war survivor,” I confided to one friend. “The war is over! I lived! But then I look around at all the rubble. My world is hardly in ruins, but there’s a lot of rebuilding to do. I lost a year of my life. And I’m fucking tired.”

In some ways, this period of time coming up feels the most difficult and complicated. I wasn’t kidding when I told people I didn’t feel brave going through treatment. What’s the big deal? You just show up when they tell you. Once you make a few decisions about your care, the rest is out of your control. But now that it’s over, now what? This is the hard part. It’s not even interesting to write about. At least hell is perversely interesting, even sometimes funny. Limbo is just banal.

“You and your body have been through a lot,” Dr. R reminded me. “A lot of people report symptoms of post-traumatic stress syndrome.”

I see Dr. R again in three months. I’ll get more blood work and another scan then. I’ll see Dr. R every three months for… a long time, I think. Any recurrence of Hodgkin’s is most likely in the first few years. After that, we start looking for secondary cancers… but we won’t talk about that right now. There are too many other things to think about first. But not today.

Click Here to Read More...

But Seriously, Folks...

Here’s something you don’t want to hear while waiting for your daily dose of radiation:

There’s something wrong with the machine.

After more than a week of right-on-schedule treatments running like a Swiss subway, one day during my second week of radiation there was a backup and the waiting room was full. Normally, it’s pretty quiet in there, with everybody doing the look-at-the-ground-shuffle-your-feet-in-silence-or-maybe-whisper-quietly-to-your-radiation-date thing but on this day there was an edge in the air, with everyone not so furtively checking out everyone else. I honestly don’t remember who broke the ice, but it’s a safe bet that it was me.

“I picked the biggest gown in the joint,” I announced, emerging from the ladies locker room in a hospital robe down to my ankles. “You and I should swap,” I suggested to an older man, slumped in a chair with his arms crossed over his chest, his blue gown barely covering the lower portion of his thighs.

“They’re all the same size!” insisted the senior citizen volunteer, whom my mother calls Rosie the Riveter, the one with the gravelly voice who sits, unapologetically, in the cancer ward, talking about drinking and smoking.

“Oh, no they’re not,” protested another man, setting off a lively debate about gown selection. I twirled around in my floor-length number to help prove his point. “At least you’ve got nice legs,” I said to the guy in the mini.

Once the gown discussion was exhausted, conversation turned to the life-size, molded plastic masks (note to self: find out what they call these things) that hold you in place on the table and mark your radiation spots. The question: To keep or not to keep? One woman said she couldn’t decide. Her neighbor, she informed the audience, had his hanging in his backyard shed along with the gardening tools and lawn mower. An elderly gentleman sitting across from her said he didn’t know how he would get his home, since he rides the train in to treatment. Rosie suggested a big plastic garbage bag. Perfect! I said. It’ll look like you’re dragging a body onto the R-6. That could be fun.

Cancer patients have proven to be hilarious stand-up comedians, especially considering the limits of the material. Most of them just get quiet when they’ve run out of jokes, but those with the energy to continue talking tend to turn to the serious stuff, the stuff that prompted me not to talk to anyone during my months of chemo, a decision that seems wiser by the minute. This one has a brain tumor. That one has tonsil cancer. I had wondered why not all the patients in the waiting room changed into hospital gowns. Suddenly it dawned on me: These people are all getting radiation to their heads.

Rarely does someone come right out and ask you what’s wrong with you. The questions are more oblique: How are you feeling today? How much longer is your treatment? It doesn’t take long to assess that everyone in this room has it worse than I do. I recognize the woman sitting across from me from the skin care and makeup session I had attended during my first month of chemo in the spring. Her treatment for breast cancer had been well underway at the time. How much longer is your treatment? I ask. She has to get chemo until December.

My first week of radiation had been sobering for different reasons. Two people I had worked with in television died of cancer, one from lung cancer, and one from colon cancer. The sportscaster who died of colon cancer was just 46 years old.

I tell the lady sitting next to me, the one who just had 14 lymph nodes removed, the one with the scar all the way up the side of her jaw, that she should go to one of the Look Good, Feel Better sessions. There’s one coming up in September, I tell her, I saw the flyer in the elevator. It was worthwhile, wasn’t it? I say to the breast cancer patient. Yes, she agrees. You can see how much it’s helped us, she adds, dryly. I am sitting there with no hair, no wig, no scarf. Neither of us is wearing any makeup.

Two people with ports sticking out of their throats walk by. It’s all relative.

I am almost always the youngest person in the room. Kids with cancer must all go to special hospitals. Half the patients here call me “honey” or “dear.” How are you feeling today, honey? Good luck to you, dear.

I am relieved when they call my name. Renee, my awesome radiation therapist, has Motown playing. The Temptations are singing “My Girl” as I climb onto the table.


Because my normal machine is “down,” I get treated on one of the older machines. It takes three times as long to deliver the same amount of radiation. Instead of counting to ten for each zap, I count to 30. It feels interminable.

“How many X-rays is each of these treatments equal to?” I ask Renee.

“Nobody’s ever asked me that before,” she responds, promising to follow up with one of the physicists. She will later tell me that the physicist said the number was too big to calculate. She does know, however, that one trans-continental flight will expose you to the same amount of radiation as a chest X-ray, a random statistic, but no more random than saying “I’m getting 30 grays of radiation.” At least it’s a statistic I can remember.

On Friday, week three, my last day of radiation, the waiting room is practically empty.

“Where is everyone?” I wonder aloud.

“Friday in the summer. People take the day off,” responded Rosie.

“You mean the staff. But what about the patients?”

“Them too. People like their long weekends in the summer. They take Friday off.”

From radiation? You can do that? It makes no sense, but what else is new?

“Bye-bye, honey,” says one of the men. “Good luck to you.”

“Good luck to you, too,” I say.

For all our chattering over the previous three weeks, no one ever exchanges contact information, or even names.

I know I will never see any of them again.

Click Here to Read More...

24

August 15, 12:45 p.m.
Philadelphia
Last Day of Radiation

August 16, 12:45 p.m.
Cape Cod
Catboat Regatta Start Line

Click Here to Read More...