Part 36 Poison in, poison out/a walk in the park


I awake at three a.m., anxious to get my final round of chemotherapy started and soon completed. I am optimistic. Becah drives me back to the center. I crank up the song “I’m Just a Singer in a Rock and Roll Band” by the Moody Blues to get my blood flowing, but Becah complains that it is a little too much for her first thing in the morning. I ask the nurse to switch TV channels, from CNN to the “home network” in efforts to avoid hearing bad news but still divert myself from concentrating on the comments of the large group sitting behind me that yaks endlessly. The next day I weigh in at 169, still lighter than usual, but blood pressure is okay and I am ready. A man from Aransas Pass named Judd sits by me, talking about his weekly drive to the center for treatment that has been ongoing for 10 years. This unsettles me greatly at the prospect that a person could have to undergo this for so long. “I’m not ready to give up”, he boldly proclaims, and I respect his courage.

For two more days I sit in chairs hooked to IVs that leisurely drip potions into my body that are intended to complete the healing process. It still puzzles me that one must put poison in the body to combat the effects of poison. My first round with this treatment in January did not cause great physical discomfort (it was more emotional), so round two is fairly uneventful. I still have symptoms from the radiation, though, and my feeding tube has strangely started leaking again since the chemo was initiated. But my taste sensation is improving – the Dr. Pepper and Sprite that I sample are not bad. And my attitude, always the key component, is generally positive.

I am determined to move on with life. This interruption for the past few months has been uncomfortable, embarrassing, at times painful, and challenging, but I will emerge victorious. There is nothing that I have experienced that I can’t handle for a little while longer. And then it will be like before. My energy will return. I will eat normally and the feeding tube and all the IVs will be disconnected. As the doctor told me, the bad days will soon all be just a dim memory.

Or so I think. Little could I realize that I have been on the proverbial walk in the park. What awaits me I could never have foreseen, and if I could have, I might have turned back and never gone down this road.