Chemo, day 1

Here it is, March 1st. March is the month that gives us hope for spring up here, and in this El Nino year, might include a fair amount of spring weather. Today is the day I started chemotherapy. Day 1 in a list that counts by sevens and threes (two auspicious numbers!) Day 1, Day 8, Day 15, (end of first three-week cycle); Day 22, Day 29, etc.

It did not go so well today.

It made me think of Stephen King. (Don’t worry, it was not that bad). Steve and I have watched two episodes of the Stephen King mini-series on Hulu, 11.22.63. It’s about a man, played by James Franco, sent back in time to prevent the assassination of John F. Kennedy. He arrives three years early, in 1960, and has some investigating to do (don’t want to kill Lee Harvey Oswald if he didn’t do it).

I’m not a fan of time travel films, and Steve really doesn’t like them. I turned it on because I am very interested in what goes on in Stephen King’s head. I find his imagination and inventions delightful, and he just throws in anything that comes to him. It’s a quirky world.

I wanted to see what  Baby Boomer Stephen King is nostalgic about. All time travel is ultimately about nostalgia– perhaps even more than regret, because the idea of changing the past is not nearly as powerful as the idea of re-experiencing the past.

What caught my husband’s attention, though, is one little quirk in the formula– in Stephen King’s version of the past rectified, the past fights back. If the time traveler gets too close to changing something significant, Time responds with a really bad payback. For example, when Franco’s character goes into a phone booth and calls his own father, he gets a “bad line.” As soon as he steps out of the phone booth, a car careens through it, killing the driver. There’s one rule about the past, and it is: you don’t belong there. The past is alive and it doesn’t like change. At all.

The reason I thought of this today is that today the cancer got word that I’m coming for it, and it fought back.

One of the drugs in my chemotherapy treatment is called Taxol. I heard several times that this particular drug can be a total shock to the system (and it’s the first one in), so before administering it I was given a low dose of Benadryl, a low dose steroid, some anti-nausea meds. I could also have been prescribed a little morphine if I was in pain to begin with, which I wasn’t.

The allergic reaction is very predictable and usually happens in the first 15 minutes. It took me 4. It is flushing, dropping blood pressure, difficulty breathing, and sometimes lower back spasms. It came on suddenly and was quite intense. The nurse came right away and turned off the IV. The protocol is another shot of Benadryl and then once the symptoms are gone, start up again. Invariably the body is prepared then and the treatment goes smoothly.

However, I had another symptom, horrible cramping in my abdomen, like very bad menstrual cramps. That is where the cancer is, and I figure it had just gotten the message that I am coming for it (no delicious glucose dye like it got with the PET scan last week).

I was desperate to get to the bathroom because of the cramps. After the Benadryl was administered and the nurse was going to wait a few minutes and start the med again, I insisted on going to the bathroom. The last thing I heard her say was “the bathroom is so close to your room– right here.”

I woke up on the floor of my room, and it was about 20 minutes before everything quieted down. The allergic reaction went away, but not the cramping. They administered a low dose of morphine and within 10 minutes that helped. It is completely gone now, and was by the time I left an hour later.

The result was, no Taxol today, which is a bummer. Freakin’ cancer. But I did get the other drug, and that one is the mighty mighty drug that I only take the first week of every cycle.

Meanwhile, we’ll take more precautions next week before starting the Taxol again. I want the Taxol. I want it all, every cancer-fighting thing they can give me.*

I knew it was poison they were sending into my system. I didn’t think that would make anything in my body happy. With Steve I’ve been using the Round-Up analogy to describe chemo: scorched earth policy before we plant the natives, then as much care as possible to give the natives a chance to grow and banish the weeds.

In the second episode of 11.22.63, Franco’s character has a personal score to settle. Time fights back, but kind of lamely, with a stomach bug and nausea. That’s no deterrent! And the abdominal cramps really did make me feel like muttering to my belly: “Oh yeah, I know where you are. You can’t hide from me anymore, mo-fos!”

Meanwhile, I have to thank everyone who thought of me specially on this day, and messaged or texted or e-mailed or just sat down and prayed.

And I’ve been getting these lovely memories sent by friends of my own past. First came this photo of me on a horse in LA in 1993 when a friend and I discovered a horse concession at the foot of the Hollywood sign and rode up there for $5. Then a friend from Albuquerque dug up a couple photos of me with her son near Taos. That visit we went to a Chinese restaurant and he asked for a second helping of “Susan [sizzling] Rice Soup.” I’ll never forget that.

And third, someone I know much, much less well, sent me an old thread from 2008 on which we were discussing Polish film of the 1970s.

Even if I could go through a portal and get back to my past, really, there is nothing I would change. (Well, I would have gone to the Soviet Union in 1985 on a college trip I skipped for a number of lame reasons, but oh well.)

*A word about the fainting: I am least alarmed by this,  though it was what freaked out the nursing staff the most. My family are a bunch of fainters and I’d just had my blood pressure drop and a shot of Benadryl into my bloodstream. I once fainted in a high school classroom doing a “Poet in the Schools” lesson. I once had to sit down or risk fainting when I was teaching Dante’s Inferno. I fainted at a friend’s garage sale because of the fumes. I am the easiest fainter there is. But I need to remember that before I want to rush off somewhere when I’m feeling dizzy. Maybe some peanut butter toast first.