Aliza Pollack – on beginning chemotherapy.
Los Angeles, California
August 2, 2000
Dear Miriam,
Yup. Interesting has been the key word lately. Under the circumstances, I’m okay. This has been a whirlwind week in which I have gone from prospective bronchitis sufferer to cancer patient. I got the final diagnosis last Tuesday: non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. I am most certainly numb. This is the result of the four-month-old “muscle spasm” in my chest and the sporadic numbness throughout my left arm. Despite all the many tests and acupuncture appointments, it took me coughing up some blood for the doctors to get their acts together.
On the one hand, I’m relieved that I finally know what is going on with me. I’m tired of lugging myself to countless doctors and having to “prove” that, indeed, something is not right with my body. I had started to write my symptoms down so I wouldn’t forget a thing when I was at an appointment, in order to maximize the opportunity. But, Christ. I ruled out cancer four months ago when one of the lame-ass doctors told me that my “discomfort” could be eradicated by physical therapy. I had envisioned playing with big, red plastic balls and hanging from uneven bars. Fast forward to the present as I contemplate chemotherapy (six treatments, one every twenty-one days, for around four or five months), which has one crappy rap. I don’t know many people who have said: “I loved it! I give it a thumbs-up.”
My doctor gave me the option of starting Wednesday (the day after the final diagnosis) or Monday. I chose Monday. I couldn’t face it that early – that would have been only a week since the blood-coughing incident, and I hadn’t really integrated the news. I kind of wanted to hold it off for as long as possible in the hopes that it might just go away. But I coughed up some more blood on Friday and experienced a different quality of pain in the chest and my doctor said come on in for your first treatment. All I remember was trying to hold in the tears while talking to the scheduler at the doctor’s office. I didn’t do such a hot job. I couldn’t make the appointment. My mum had to make it for me. It was almost farcical when she asked me when was a good time for me to come in. As if I had any sense of time. As if there is ever a “good time” for chemotherapy.
The chemo (note the insider’s slang – not chemotherapy but “chemo”) took place in the doctor’s office, where there is a whole annex of recliners, TV’s, magazines, and people. I was struck by how different we all were. I shared a space of four recliners with a forty-five-year-old blue-collar-looking black man, who left halfway through my treatment and was replaced by a fifty-ish Latina woman, flanked by her nervous and protective English-speaking kids; a forty-year-old white woman who had “fuck you” written all over her but applied her lipstick nonchalantly throughout, as if she was expecting company; and a jubilant though possibly senile seventy-year-old woman, white-haired, soft-cheeked, upper-middle-class, sipping a chocolate Ensure held for her by her Filipina caretaker.
It was all pretty amazing and inspiring, because for the past ten days I have been the only person in my “community” with cancer, which has been a bit of a pressure in an odd way. I don’t know how to act, they don’t know how to act (yet), and here were all sorts of people with it. They were walking in and out, going to the bathroom, having conversations. Smiling, even. The mean, lipsticked woman would try to sleep, turning from side to side as her IV dripped. The black man was reading the L.A. Times, which, in my opinion, is no great distraction. (A little insight into my mental state – I packed a bag for a mini-beach vacation: one thick magazine, two books, four CD’s, and one empty diary. I was going in for two hours.) Overall, it felt like a typical party situation, where no one knows each other but we all have something in common: the host. In our case, cancer, the greatest host of all. No one talked, but there were lots of empathetic looks floating around. We were sharing something so personal and intimate, so exclusive. We were at our most vulnerable, and no one on the street would even know. They didn’t know about this room in some innocuous building in L.A. I knew there were stories in that room. I just didn’t know how to start the conversations.
Interestingly, chemotherapy was actually okay. It was. In any case, it could not have been worse than the anxiety I had been harboring over it. Strangely, it provided me with some moments of peace. For the first time in many intense days, I actually had time to myself, a little control over my life. I was alone in my recliner, facing the sun, with an expansive view of the hills. I turned on my music to drown out any medical-speak, closed my eyes and tried to remove myself from the reality of that place.
Not that it was all a bed of roses, mind you. I had three drugs administered intravenously, over the course of two hours. My first drug was an anti-nausea drug which, if administered too quickly (which it was) makes you super-dizzy (which it did). It was a little nerve-wracking trying to focus on my magazine when the words were jumping all over the page. Next time, they say, they will give it to me slower.
That, however, was a cakewalk compared to the second drug, which was, by far, the most un-ignorable part of the whole chemo process. First of all, it has to be administered by a nurse; if it doesn’t keep flowing through the veins properly, it can do some serious damage. Then there is the drug itself: it is a cheap and ugly shade of red, a bit like cherry Kool-aid. Very synthetic-looking. And it is cold. As in, brrrr. I mean, really. If this shit has to be coursing through my veins, I want it at room temperature, at the very least. I want subtlety, and room for escape. But instead my eyes are open, and I can feel it traveling – first, its trail feels cold, then itchy, under my skin. Like I said, thoroughly un-ignorable.
I was so freaked out by the second drug that I can’t even remember the third. I do remember the nurse leaving and finally lying back down in my recliner. I remember looking at the bag of saline (a cleansing solution) that was dripping into my arm and praying that it would clean me up, just freshen up my veins and clean me up.
When I was finally finished, I was pretty elated and energetic: I actually went out to eat. Over the weekend I had very little nausea and for that, I took some drugs (whatever the hell they want to ply me with).
Twenty hours after the treatment, my left chest, where the tumor was, felt significantly better. It no longer felt like I had a corset pulling my chest in. I could breathe deeply. My arm was free of any pain, tingling or numbness. It was crazy. Like magic. While it was reassuring to discover that the treatment was working, it was also totally frightening. I had to admit that they were right. I have cancer.
Much love,
Aliza
