Chemo

I thought I knew a lot going into chemotherapy. I'd heard and read about the nausea, the loss of appetite, the hair falling out, all of it, but I really had no idea what I was getting into. Looking back, it didn't matter that much. My philosophy became, "Just do it.", "Survive." Whatever the doctors told me to do, that's what I did.
Eventually, I stopped doing much research as it didn't really matter. Much of the time, the choice was do this or die. Um, I'm gonna go with do this. A lot of what I did know I learned from telling people I had cancer -- which is a very strange thing in itself, telling people you're very sick. "Hi. It's Jonathan. Yeah, I know. I've been meaning to call you too. I know, things get crazy like that. Listen, I have cancer." I had to make that call a few too many times. It's not the kind of thing you stick up on facebook. It just seems out of place next to "Best latte ever.", "I just bought the new iPhone.", "Stuck in traffic.",  "What a lame season finale.", "I was just diagnosed with esophageal cancer." I could add a picture of the tumor. Or not. Anyway, back to chemotherapy --

Unfortunately, much of what Cancer says about chemo is true. Maybe not the part about the giant robots, but it is definitely poison that flows throughout your entire body. I know it's medicine and that it is hopefully killing the cancer, but it also takes a toll on the rest of you.

I'd been to the doctor's office several times, but this was the first time I entered the chemo room: A fairly small space with about five or six large recliners each with it's own bag of fluid hanging from a pole. Tubes come down from the bags and are attached intravenously to the people sitting in the chairs. There's a game show on TV that nobody's watching. Everybody there is much older than I am. I sit down in one of the chairs and they attach me to a bag of fluid using a needle and my brand new port which I had surgically implanted in my chest two days earlier. The port is basically a rubber pin cushion under your skin that is attached with a tube to a major artery in your neck. The needle is stuck into the port allowing the medicine to flow quickly through the blood, and saving the veins in your arms from repeated needles and injections.

My treatment called for the infusion of a cocktail of chemotherapy drugs. It would take about seven to eight hours, and I'd do it every three weeks. After three cycles of this I'd be scanned to see if it's working. If it does appear to be working, we do the whole thing again.

The first week was the worst. It didn't get much better until the middle of the third week, and even then I was still out of sorts. I definitely felt nauseated a lot of the time, but there were also chills, odd arthritic pain in my arms and legs that would come and go, throwing up, fatigue to a such ridiculous degree that it was exhausting to even lie down, weakness, cramping, mind/memory scrambled, and all manner of infections... I was a wreck, physically and mentally. I was still in shock from hearing I had cancer in the first place. But, somehow I fought through it. Dr. G told me I was going to lose my hair on every inch of my body. The hair on my head eventually started to fall out, but slowly and not completely. I got it shaved anyway. The only part of my body that was completely hairless was the area around my private parts.

After about nine weeks we got the scans back. It seemed the chemotherapy was doing something. The tumor, it appeared, shrank just slightly. Also, I was able to start eating more easily now. Before, I was on a diet of water and Ensure. Now, I could actually get some solid food down. I couldn't always keep it down, but I tried. Since they told me that chemo works best if you can keep eating and get some calories in you, in addition to the Ensure and a few other soft foods, I discovered McDonald's one dollar chicken sandwich. 350 calories in just a few bites. Soft bread and processed chicken. Perfect. It's not all I ate, but it did help me keep my weight up.

I endured the second round of chemo for another nine weeks. All the same symptoms basically, but this one seemed to take a little bit more out of me. Whatever. One day, my wife comes to me in my bed. She tells me that she's having contractions and is going to the hospital. She told me to rest, and not to come in case it was a false alarm. She'd had one already, and would call if it was the real deal. I nervously lay by the phone for what seemed like forever. Finally, it rang. She said we had a few hours and I didn't have to rush, but it was the real deal this time. I paced around, uncertain what to do, but not long after, I was in a cab on the way to the hospital.

When I got to her room, she was in a hospital gown lying in down in bed. A drab room, but she was beautiful and seemed to light the place up. My wife would ague that point, but that's how I remember it. Nurses would periodically come in to monitor her dilation and contractions, but it would be some time before she was ready to deliver. I was still feeling pretty sick, and there was a chair that unfolded into a low, small bed type thing. I didn't fit on it, but I lay there curled up waiting nervously, half sitting up every time a nurse entered to check on my wife.

Finally, they said it was time. The doctor came in and sat down on the bed. She calmly explained to my wife how this was going to work and what she needed to do. Soon, it was all happening. My wife was pushing. I was holding her hand and saying how great she was doing. The doctor was shouting out orders to the nurses. Eventually, a little hairy, goo-covered head began to emerge. Before I knew it, he was out, cleaned up, and laying in my wife's arms. It was magical. In that moment, everything was good. I had a son.