Chemotherapy

You can tell by the photos, I really never wanted to write about chemotherapy. I still have hair. I am pregnant. I took these a while ago with the intent of writing about the experience, but clearly I really did not want to write about it because here I am with no hair and there is a sleeping infant in Greg's arm while he watches the political stuff in the living room. This was treatment number two. I have 8 in all. I will be done in April. And then it's on to surgery--a whole other journey.
The Breast Cancer Center at UCSF is probably the best place I could get treated for cancer. Hope Rugo, my oncologist, is probably the best doctor I could hope to have. She looks like she could be one of my aunts. She's strong and powerful and smart, but she still gives me hugs. Pauline, the woman in the picture, is probably the best nurse I could hope to get. She's Irish and has this great accent. In Ireland she was a midwife, so I ask her all kinds of baby pregnancy questions. She's so real and approachable it's like she's been part of my life forever and I have only spent just a few hours with her. Oh, and before I even got my first treatment, I get a call from the nurse who I have my chemo orientation with, Janine Figalo, and she's not only someone I grew up on The Farm with, but we took all our chemistry classes at College of Marin together when I was thinking of being a nurse myself. It was like I had family at this place already. I am grateful for all of this.
Here's how chemo works. I get lab work done right when I arrive. They need to check that all my blood levels are OK before they give me my next treatment. Then after they take my blood, I go upstairs and meet with a nurse practitioner or Hope. Hopefully my labs are back (all chemo patients get STAT on their labs) and we go over them. Then we talk about any side affects I may be having and then they measure my tumor. Originally my tumor was 7 cm. After the first treatment it had gone down to 4 and after the second it had gone down to 3. This is really great. It means my cancer is responding to the treatment. Honestly, if it wasn't I don't know what I would do.
Now I am ready for chemo and I go up to the fifth floor. This is the Idea Friend Infusion Center. I don't know who Ida Friend is. There is a plaque and a picture of Ida when you enter the Infusion Center (yes, it sounds like a spa, no, it is NOTHING like a spa) but I have never paused to read it because I am on a mission to get rid of cancer so I want to check in right away and get this stuff going. After I check in, I go in to the Infusion Center. Here is where it is hard. See when I first visited the center I was pregnant, I had this long hair. At the time, I felt the picture of health and life and vitality and I didn't understand how I belonged there. It's like I took a wrong turn. I was supposed to be on the floor with all the other pregnant ladies, talking about daycare and stretch marks. But, no, I am at the Infusion center. And all around me are these people in various rooms with panoramic windows looking out over the city sitting in what looks like first class airplane chairs hooked up to IVs. They all have various ways to hide their lack of hair: Hats, Scarves, Wigs. You feel the sickness all around, no matter how many photos or plants or friendly faces you see, you cannot deny that people are here to fight for their lives and that some of them just aren't going to make it.
So far, because of my pregnancy, I have been able to get a private room, which is where the photos were taken and I haven't had to join the people in the rooms. I am really afraid to. It's not about being afraid of them--they are just people, like me. But it will mean I am one of them, which I know I already am--but still, sitting in that chair as they all knit, read, watch TV, listen to ipods, type on their laptops, talk low with a friend--means I am a cancer patient, not a new mom. All I want to be is a new mom.
So, getting the treatment isn't that bad. First Pauline hooks me up to an IV on my hand. I am really getting used to being sticked by the way. Then she starts some anti-nausea meds through the IV. One of them is a steroid and it makes me feel like I have a lot of energy. It actually makes me feel pretty good--so I am super talkative and sort of hungry which is why I am downing spaghetti that Greg went and got me in one of those pictures. Then she does the first chemo drug which is adriomyacin. This one she does by hand in my IV with heavy gloves on because it is so toxic that if it dribbles out and gets on my skin, it could burn it. After that it's cyclophosphamide through the IV which takes about an hour. Then I am done and I can go home and I REALLY want to go home at this point. All in all the ordeal can last anywhere from 4 to 5 hours.
I had to have treatment yesterday, the day after I got home from the hospital with Sadie. It was so hard to leave in the morning. Thankfully my Aunt Karen is visiting from NY and drove all the way from Berkeley to be at my house at 6:45 AM. She was my chemo buddy for the day so Greg could stay home and be with Sadie with the help of my friend Sara, Amber and her mom Pearl. I am so grateful for all the help. When I got home, the house was all warm and cozy. Amber had tidied up, something she's really good at. Sara was still there watching Sadie and was gushing with that feeling of taking care of such a beautiful little being. We went and looked at her in her little crib, just a little pink bundle all sweet and perfect and I was overwhelmed with the feeling that I had again taken a wrong turn. I didn't belong there. I was chemo woman. I had toxic substances running through my veins, killing fast growing cells. I didn't match my life. It was horrible. I just wanted to leave. It was like I didn't belong there.
I am so grateful for my friend Sara who sat with me for hours while I went through the metamorphosis from chemo woman to new mom--which I am realizing now happened. Every time I would cry, she would slowly get up from the couch to come towards me just to touch me and then I would pull myself together and she would go back to the couch and we would start talking about something else and then I would start to cry again about the unfairness of it all and she would get back up. It was a funny sort of impulse she couldn't resist every time I started to cry. And with this, I shed my chemo skin and became new mom. Well that and a shower.
Love,
Rosalie