(Written while there this morning, but posted after getting home.)
I’m not here for chemo, of course. Just an early morning zap, and then a visit with Dr. Science, and then my Herceptin.
About the zap: Today was the last day for treatment to the larger area. I did 28 of these, consisting of 3 zaps each, resulting in a rectangle-shaped 2nd-3rd degree burn on my chest wall, with a few trailing burns over my shoulder. The other result, I say with great hope, is that any remaining cancer cells hovering near the tumor were burned crispy.
My last 5 treatments will be an electron treatment focused closely along my scar. “So far it’s been photons,” Dr. Tanner said.
I’m glad someone bothered to study physics.
They’ve rearranged the chemo barn since last I stopped by. They took apart those rows of 3 chairs and turned the whole room into pairs only, each chair tilted towards its partner. I’m not going to call it cozy, but it is much improved.
Other improvements: the pharmacist. He is a tall guy, 30-something, and he works in the room behind the nurses’ desk, preparing our various bags of drugs. Before, he had a hairy neck, scruffy face, and he wore sweatpants and t-shirts. After, he is clean-shaven—even the neck!—and he’s wearing a crisp set of scrubs.
Before and after what?
Before and after I commented to one of the nurses about “that guy” seeming a little creepy, and why didn’t he have to follow the same dress code as everyone else who works here?
It wasn’t a complaint. It was a comment. Delivered with a smile. I think.
Lest we give into the fallacy of the false cause, I should emphasize that the nurse didn’t say to me right then, “You’ve got a point: I’ll mention it to management.”
Am I going to follow up to learn what really happened? No.
Ah, I’m back now from my appointment with Dr. Science. Only, he was on call today at Penrose hospital, so I instead saw Rose Gates, the nurse practitioner. Remember her? When she walked in the door, I thought, “Doh! We never reached consensus on what to call her!”
I had some questions about future treatment that only my treating physician could answer, like when would I do a routine scan? And when would I start taking Tomaxacin? And what is that drug, exactly?
Rose Gates asked me when I would see Dr. Markus next. I said, “It’s not that I’m not pleased to see you, Nurse Practioner Gates, but I was actually scheduled to see Dr. Markus today.”
And so it is settled. This is what I have called her. This is what I will continue to call her. You all can go ahead and call your nurse practitioners whatever you like.
Did I tell you before about Nurse Nicole in the Chemo Barn who is a Canadian married to a USAF officer? They were stationed in Alabama for 3 years before moving here and when I first met her, she spoke with a Southern accent.
A heavy one.
“It’s so embarrassing,” she told me. That would probably be a rude thing for her to say, or rude, perhaps, that she’d find it embarrassing, or rude for me—though she both felt it and said it—for me to report. But there it is.
Maybe if it had been felt and said by an American and not a Canadian, I’d be slower to share it. Instead, I'm slow to blame a Canadian for feeling embarrassed about picking up an American southern accent. Eh?
Today, she is my nurse and I noted that she had lost her accent all together. She smiled broadly and told me that she’d just had a visit from her family for 3 weeks. The traces of Alabama have been flushed away!
“But you don’t sound Canadian, either,” I said. “You are now Every-woman!”
What else can I tell you?
I look around at the place I’d seen every Monday morning for 18 weeks in a row and it’s different: The patients are all new—no Kathy from my first day who was also here on my last; no British lady whose breast cancer turned up stage IV 12 years after her diagnosis; no young guy with his father who though Courtney the med tech was cute; no middle age businessman who worked on his laptop the whole time and fiddled with the cell phone clipped to his belt and hustled off at the end of treatment as though being here was just one more appointment to knock out in his day.
The whole crew is new. And the start of their sojourn reminds me that I’m so near the end of mine. You’d think I’d be all smiles about that, about the sheer prospect of moving on. But when I consider it, I start crying. Another layer of grief I didn’t see coming. A layer that will fade away as the others have, I’m sure.
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