Halfway through

My cycling metaphor, which has not seen much use since I introduced it when I started this blog, is now breaking down completely.  There is no meaning to being halfway there in a cycling race.  The mountains matter much more than the distance.  But I am halfway through my chemotherapy.  I’m scheduled to undergo twelve sessions.  Today was the sixth.

I realize that I go to each session with more apprehension.  It’s not that there’s anything bad about them.  The blood tests before (platelet and neutrophil counts dropping, though still enough of either) require only a tiny prick in the finger.  The results are ready, Theranos-style but actually working, in less than two minutes.  I lift myself up one floor, hand the printout to the receptionist and wait for my consultation with the oncologist (anything wrong, no, blood pressure, temperature, weight, sounds from the heart, lung and gut, and over) and then for the session itself.

A nurse comes to pick me up and shows me my bed.  Her first question:  “Can I get you anything, water, coffee, tea?”  I take water and my pills, four of them whose purpose, which I’ve since forgotten, was explained to me before the first session.  One of the pills is against nausea.  Then the nurse jabs a needle into the port in my chest and hooks me up for the therapy.  This jabbing is slightly painful, but more in anticipation than in reality.  Once the needle is in, I don't even feel it.

The nurse connects various tubes, takes more blood if necessary (not this time), and hooks up a bag of glucose solution to wash the system before the first two drugs are given in parallel.  I usually have to wait a bit for the drugs, which are prepared al gusto and on site.  They drip into me within two hours.  This is the only time I can really do anything with any sort of focus.  I usually write work emails.

After the first two drugs, the system is washed to get everything into saline.  Then I’m hooked up to avastin, an antibody that the nurses treat with considerable respect.  The first time I got it, it took two hours, slow enough for the nurses to save me from possible allergic reactions.  I felt nothing.  During the next session, the infusion speed was doubled, and again during the next.  Now it takes only half an hour.  Every time I’m connected to a blood pressure meter to verify that I tolerate the antibody.  Then more washing, injection (through the port – no pain) of the last drug, and connection to the balloon pump that feeds me more of the same drug over the next 48 hours.

There’s really nothing painful or even uncomfortable with the therapy itself, and the side effects are minimal.  And yet, I go there with a certain degree of trepidation.  It’s been going on for too long.  Every new session is designed to prolong my life and keep me as healthy as possible.  It probably does that, but I don’t know.  What I do know is that I have cancer, and every session reminds me of that.  At home, I can forget.  I live a normal life.  I work, play, love.  Being in the hospital reminds me that all of this isn’t true, and that I’m sick.  I don’t like this at all.

This is also why I’m relieved when the nurse removes the pump two days later.  The pump – a common theme – causes neither pain nor discomfort.  As I sleep on my back without moving much, I don’t mind a tube from my chest to a plastic bottle next to my pillow.  I can ride my trainer with the pump and take a very careful shower afterwards.  I ride my bike to work.  The pump is never in the way.  But it’s there, and it reminds me that I’m sick.  Have I mentioned that I don’t like this at all?

This is why I’m happy that I’ve now reached the halfway point of the therapy.  Six more sessions once the pump is removed on Friday.  Six sessions I can do in good spirits.  I’ve shown that already.  I’ll do it again.  After that, who knows.  I don’t, but I firmly believe that I will be healthy and survive.  I'm nowhere near halfway through my life.