FIRST CHEMO OPINION ON #WORLDCANCERDAY

Chemo: Work In Progress on World Cancer Day:

Men who take women to their medical appointments are one thing. Women who insist on going with their men are another.

Elaine insisted, but I insisted first.

I wanted my doctors and specialists to know I had a fucking pit bull ready to turn loose on them if they got out of line. She hadn’t seen much point going for the ultrasound and other early tests. She’s had them and given them as a mother and a doctor.

But she was there with me listening to the first chemo infusion oncologist layout a treatment plan.

Getting fucking juiced up on hard drugs that may have lifetime side effects was attention-getting for both of us. I checked on the side effects—the only way to avoid chemo side effects was by not having chemo.

So there’s that.

The most interesting part of the first cancer treatment presentation was listening to the doc explain things in what sounded like a Daffy Duck voice.

It was the same voice I’d heard the first time I met him with the in-laws’ cancer review, but this time it sounded even stronger.

Like the ENT Dr. Furman in his wonderfully whimsical fashion choices that took the edge off cancer talk, the oncologist sounded like he spoke in a fake voice for a needed distraction while he opened the chemo floodgates.

Explaining Chemo

“We’ll thstart on one chemo,” he said, “and useth a pump to keep the levelth up. Then we’ll add another chemo to thwink the tumor further down before radiathon beginth.”

I wanted to add, It wouldn’t be so fucking big if the needle biopsy guy hadn’t stirred the shit up, but didn’t. It was part of the cancer work, part of the job, nothing personal, even if it felt like the most invasive fucking deal to go through.

“During radiathon you will get thwee infuthions thwee weekth apart wiff a new chemo,” he said.

I saw his concerned face watching me for reaction. What did he expect? What did anyone else do when he explained the plan?

I settled on a neutral face, a Dr. Furman face, an expression without emotion. I couldn’t see what I looked like, but if he was going to be my doctor he needed to know I could lock my emotions down with the best of them.

On the surface I showed the same fat face I had on my driver’s license picture. It was that or an expression I’d seen in abstract art. I wanted to show my Picasso photo face, not a disjointed self-portrait from his later years with eyes on the same side of his head. But reality was slicing in with a thousand little cuts.

“So I’ll do the math,” I said. “Two chemo drugs to start, with three rounds of a new chemo drug during seven weeks of radiation. So I’m getting three different chemo drugs and radiation?”

“That ith corwect,” he said. “And a chemo pump.”

One of the chemo drugs had the initials F U in the name; my name started feeling like a big F U too.

Now The Important Chemo Question

I felt so vain even mentioning it, like the kid who went to the high school prom with a pimple on his face so huge that his mom covered it with makeup and made it worse. Thanks, Ma.

Luckily my date was very understanding and touched it up before prom pics. Thanks, Barb.

“Will I lose my hair?” I asked.

“Yeth, thome pathienths do looth their hair,” he said.

“Will all of this chemo and radiation affect my voice?” I asked.

“He’s a singer,” my wife said, which sort of stunned me. She considered me a singer? Yes, I play a guitar and sing songs and make noise, but she never seemed to pay attention. Now I’m a singer? Fuck yes, I’m a singer.

Wild horses couldn’t drag me away.

“Do you thing?” the doctor asked.

“I do. And I’d like to sing more in the future.” If I could have sung my way out of there, I’d still be howling.

The doctor explained what could happen in his most professional voice, which seemed a result of too much saliva and a tongue too big for his mouth.

With a tongue cancer diagnosis, I paid more attention to tongue stuff.

“Your voithe may change, but I hear a thpeeth defect now, though you may not noticeth,” he said.

“You hear a speech defect in my voice?” I asked. 

We sat looking at each other from chairs two feet apart.

Very Cozy Chemo

I’ve never been a fan of the “eye contact” conversation where the other person makes a big deal out of staring directly into my eyes with more fucking attitude than I thought the conversation warranted.

It usually happened at Home Depot with some nutjob explaining yard irrigation parts.

I stared at the chemotherapy doc with those “what the fuck are you talking about” eyes that sunk back in my head.

Since it was cancer he was talking about, and he’s a cancer doctor, and I had cancer, I tried to make the treatment he outlined sound like a good idea.

The “what the fuck are you talking about” notion didn’t help.

“Yeth,” he said. “Tho the chemo may change that. You may end up without the thpeeth defect you now have.”

I waited for the punch line.

We sat looking at each other, unblinking, no sign of him joking about his speech defect, just comforting me with news that my own speech defect may improve after a few doses of chemo made the rounds.

This was the first time I heard I had a speech defect, and it came from a man with a speech defect. He could have prescribed himself chemo for his voice. What else—was he deaf too?

Maybe I started nodding during our eye lock, or maybe my brain was just jumping around the idea that I was going to have a doctor I’d turned down when he ordered chemo for my elderly in-laws, and I’m the next man up for three of them?

I didn’t turn him down

Instead, we toured the facility and checked out the infusion lounge with all of the chairs and IV trees. It was after hours so the place was empty. 

This is the field where I’ll play the cancer game, I thought. My field of killing cancer dreams.

I was ready to start.

I liked the view, if not the idea of my voice changing and my hair falling out, but it’s fucking cancer. That’s what happens. By the time I left the infusion clinic with Elaine I was set to go.

The doctor could have stabbed a fucking chemo pump in my neck right there, I was so ready.   

I was so certain I was set with the chemo doc that I got a special chemo celebration haircut.

I went to a barbershop with two barbers and used barber theory to get the worst haircut possible. I chose the barber with the best trim. In a shop of two they might cut each other’s hair, so the one with the nice haircut messed up the other one.

Since I was about to lose my hair, I wanted to look like shit, so I’d feel relieved when it fell out on my pillow. After that, I’d shave my melon ahead of time, like Michael Jordan.

It was the small things, like a horrible haircut, that powered me along.

. . . to be continued