The Chemo Room
(By Wes Clark - he wrote this a couple of years ago and has been cancer-free since May of 2006. This article is about him going through chemotherapy).
Before you start, I strongly recommend listening to, “Little Acorns” by The White Stripes. On dexamethazone, you might cry like a pansy like I do — but man is it a great song. I don’t think they were writing about Cancer - but it’s hard not to feel an incredibly personal connection to that song… for me. It’s the cheesy sampled intro from what sounds like a religious call-in-show that puts the entire song into perspective, so you really have to hear it over just reading the lyrics.
To me this is boring, but I think somehow I may be helping somebody out a little that has been diagnosed with Cancer and is awaiting treatment. For the most part, my daily life has been very easy. In a conversation I had Friday with another Cancer patient on her last chemo-therapy treatment — I got a glimpse of what life is like for people on their way out ; hopefully healthy and Cancer Free.
She had all the usual complaints I would have, Cisplatin - which is actually Platinum they inject you with to kill tumours - leaves a horrible taste in your mouth. How horrible it is depends on your concept of the world, myself ; I never really made the effort to complain about it but of course, you have to complain about something and being alive isn’t worth being upset about. It’s kind of funny, in retrospect what I’ve overlooked as side-effects of the chemotherapy. Everybody wants to know how you feel, to see if you have any problems and I’m always saying, “Fine…” like, “Why are you asking?”. It takes effort for me to think, “Well, I get pimple break-outs and I had a small sore in my mouth that goes away at the end of each session and my poop is a little hard without the stool softeners and I have a bad taste in my mouth for a few days after week one, and I get a little emotional but it passes almost instantly and I’ve had no nausea”. These are things I have to consciously consider and recite to myself if anybody asks because… to be honest, I’ve felt worse in life. I expected to feel like I had the flu 24 hours a day at best ; I feel like I have it easy.
She is on dexamethazone as well and it sounds like the emotions of anger and sadness and super sensitivity aren’t just something I’m experiencing on my own, they are in fact drug induced. Which is good because I started bawling for all of, I shit you not, 10 seconds today while driving over to meet my buddy for some late night driving and story-telling. It ends about as quick as it starts and in the end you’re left asking yourself…. “what the hell am I upset about? Oh …. it’s the drugs”. It’s a very strange concept, most people don’t cry for no reason. Sometimes, we may think we do, and then we realize there’s often a deeper, more unsettling reason trying to surface. I’m quite sure for the first time, I’m getting emotional about nothing, as if a switch is triggered that says, ‘Crying Neurons FIRE!’ and then robots come out and have a laser-beam fight and god looks down and laughs at you for being such a pawn to his little dexamethazone induced misconceptions of the world. In a way it’s kind of entertaining and strange.
But for people just finding out they have to undergo chemotherapy, I think the only important thing I can tell them is ; it’s not so bad anymore. That’s all I know, all around the board - no matter what your ailment, it would have been MUCH worse years ago. I have a fairly easy time with it, not because I have a positive attitude but because I went in expecting the worst and came out saying, “Hey… this makes me feel kind of crappy, I’m going to get some sleep”. And that’s about it. Forget the bigger problems like, “I have cancer” and look at the day-to-day stuff you have to do and the tiny problems you experience, Chemotherapy becomes a simple routine like getting a flu shot that makes you feel kind of bad. Personally, I see that as a major upside to the stereotype of vomiting and shitting and being half on this edge of death from the day you start treatment until your final prognosis.
I don’t know a lot about Cancer, aside from what I have - but I get the impression no matter your situation, your life will improve and your drastic situation will become much easier to deal with and manage once you start the routine and know what’s coming up from day to day. I wish I could make it easier for someone who is about to undergo the uncertainty and fear, but I can’t. The best I can do is show you some photos of where I laze around for five hours a day on my solid week of Chemo.
This is me on my bed. You just walk in and pick a bed while they mix up your chemo drugs at the pharmacy. It’s pretty laid back. You can see I have an IV already being covered up by the sleeve ; you just leave with that in your arm and it saves you tonnes of getting poked by needles everyday.
Not wanting to take a picture of anybody in the room, I managed to get a good shot of the beds and layout at the Juravinski Cancer Centre in Hamilton. This is where I’m being treated. Normally these beds aren’t all full, but often there is a few people on each side of the room. This is from the bed I always choose looking off to the left. Once you get there, you actually feel like you’re just putting in a day at the office. You bring some food, a book or watch TV - which they have their… and you just relax, make small talk with the nurses. It’s amazing what becomes normal when you’re really forced into a bad situation, but at the same time, it’s so easy to deal with things that seem normal. The attitude and the one-on-one approach they take at this particular Cancer centre is INCREDIBLY comforting, but comforting in a consistant, “We’re treating you, what do you need, how are you doing? We know who you are, we know you’re going to do well” kind of way. You can’t help but do ‘well’ relative to your situation, otherwise - you wouldn’t be getting treated.
I mean that in a positive way as well, they don’t just drug you up with ‘hope’ you’ll do better, the drugs actually work today. If you can’t be cured then you’re living with a degenerative disease that is much better than many I can think of ; HIV, Multiple Sclerosis, paralysis. There really are worse things in life. Honestly though, it’s not my place to say that. I’ve only considered what could be worse but my prognosis is still very good. In a way I feel very strange talking about Cancer having seen so many people going through so much more because it was caught later, or in a worse spot, or it’s a harder form of cancer to beat.
This is the big scary, “IV” Pump that connects up to your arm. They hang up some saline solution, fill it with anti-emetic drugs (drugs that prevent nausea) plus whatever else you’re on (STEROIDS!) and make sure you’re hydrated properly. Then they hang the chemo drugs and it all goes through the same tube into your arm. I’ve honestly slept through an entire treatment and woke up finished. It’s not so disheartening, in fact, you come to enjoy the loud beeping this pump makes when it’s done it’s injections - because then you know how much longer is left, and you can say to yourself, “I’m down another bag…. 3 more and I’m done the day, 4 more days and I’m done the week”. And get as elaborate with that mathematical focus towards the final treatment as you like.
Posted: May 30th, 2008 under Cancer.
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