A day in the life

...because someone asked...


9 a.m.
I'm sitting in the waiting room of the cancer center patiently awaiting lab tests and chemotherapy followed by my daily radiation treatment. I'm early. I'm always early, but this time I'm really, really early. With eight separate medical appointments this week alone, it's not surprising that I get confused. Better early than late, I guess, since I have to be here anyway.

Chemo days always start early, which means I rely on a network of helpful friends to drive out to the middle of nowhere at the crack of dawn to fetch me and then take me home again later. I could drive myself to town in the morning, but the drugs make me too dopey to drive home at the end of the day, so I may as well get a ride both ways and avoid abandoning my car in that annoying parking garage.

On my daily radiation visits I always park in the same general area in that annoying garage: level B (less traffic down there, easy access to the lower exit), on the end near the cancer center entrance (not so far for me to walk), facing out toward fresh air and sunshine (so my car won't get claustrophobic). Today, though, a wonderful colleague dropped me off.

So here I sit in the waiting room, with Regis and Kelly babbling on the television mounted on the wall. It's a lovely waiting room--soothing colors, lots of light, comfy chairs, coffee and snacks, faux waterfall in the corner and stone fireplace right in the middle of the room--but it's generally full of sick people, some with no hair, some in wheelchairs, some haggard and worn and sleeping wherever they land. Sometimes there are children. I always hope the children are here to accompany sick parents. It's just too awful to imagine children suffering through chemotherapy and radiation.

9:17
The lab nurse calls me in so she can take my blood. The medi-port makes drawing blood easier, but that doesn't mean it's painless. At first stick she can't get any blood. "That's because I don't have any left," I say, but she doesn't believe me. It's true that the chemotherapy exacerbates my anemia to the point that my cheerful oncologist keeps saying comforting things like "Don't worry, if it gets any worse we can give you blood transfusions," but I haven't run out of blood entirely, so the nurse eventually finds a few lonely blood cells willing to go out for a spin.

Back in the waiting room, I wonder what my numbers will look like this time. Will the tumor markers decrease again? I won't find out until next week, and the suspense is just killing me. Unlike Regis and Kelly, who are causing millions of brain cells to commit suicide out of sheer boredom.

I know! I'll use the cancer center's free wireless internet system to check my mail: junk, mass e-mails regarding events I can't attend, committee meeting minutes, supportive messages from colleagues, the usual. No frantic messages from students so far. I've set up online activities for all three classes today and tomorrow, and I fully expect a few newbies to struggle with the technology even though we've put it through its paces in class several times already. But maybe they'll surprise me.

My honors students in the humor class have already surprised me by posting their discussion questions well in advance of the deadline--and what terrific questions! I'd like to test-drive a few myself, but better to give the students a chance to take 'em out for a spin. I want to see how they handle the question about when it's acceptable to make humor out of human suffering, a topic particularly close to my heart right now.

Let's go check the online discussion board to see how it's going--but first, a detour to the sitemeter faithfully tabulating blog visits. Wow. My numbers have never been better. If I'd know getting cancer would make me so darn popular, I'd have done it years ago.

Sorry. Just a little inappropriate levity re: human suffering.

Nothing new in today's discussion yet...but some students have already posted comments for tomorrow's online class. Which works better, synchronous or asynchronous discussion? I guess I'm getting ready to find out.

10 a.m.
The news is on now, showing strikingly beautiful photos of California burning, which raises the question: when is it acceptable to make art out of human suffering? Is it better to make art or humor or something else entirely?

Oh, now they're reporting on the Jaycee Dugard kidnapping case. It's painful to contemplate the facts, but who can turn away? Will it ever be possible to make either art or humor out of that kind of human suffering? Why or why not? Discuss.

(And who am I addressing here anyway? Hi, whoever you are! Glad you stopped by! Hope you're doing something much more fun than chemotherapy! (If so, why would you want to read this?) Write and tell me about it so I can enjoy it too!)

10:20 a.m.
The nurse leads me back to the chemotherapy room, already crowded with patients attached to IV's. I request a window seat as usual, and I settle in on the big comfy yellow reclining chair in a cheery cubicle surrounded by warm wood half-walls topped with frosted glass featuring a lovely leaf motif. A volunteer comes over to see if I need anything--water, warm blanket, snack?--and we chat a bit. He and his wife, both retired, volunteer here twice a week, and he says 99 percent of the patients he works with are nice. What about the rest? "Sometimes it's hard to be nice if you don't feel so good," he explains. Resolved: be nice to the volunteers, regardless.

Voices from the next cubicle:

"She has a laptop over there."

"A laptop? Do you think they have wireless?"

"I'll go ask."

"No, don't ask--I don't want you to bother her."

"Bother me," I call out. A pleasant young man pops over from the next cubicle, where he's keeping his mother company while she gets chemotherapy. They're both delighted to discover the existence of wireless access. "Next time I'll bring my computer," says the mother, "and maybe we can talk." I refrain from pointing out that we could actually talk just as well without a computer, but let's not get contentious.

10:40 a.m.
Lunch arrives. It's a little early, but it'll keep. Sandwich, cole slaw, apple, granola bar. And of course I have my college mug full of green tea with ginger. Sustenance enough to get me through the day.

Further exploration of the lunch bag reveals that the round object in the bottom of the bag is not an apple after all but an orange. Even better: I'll peel it and experience some natural aromatherapy...but apparently I'm not the first one to think of that. Why can't all medical facilities smell like fresh-squeezed oranges?

10:45 The pre-chemo medication drip is doing its thing. These drugs precede the nasty chemo drugs to head off bad reactions and prevent nausea, but they also make me dopey. I may pay a spontaneous visit to la-la land at any moment. Hope I remember to hit "Save" first.

She's four years older than I am, the woman in the next cubicle. I know this because she has been asked twice already to state her name and birthdate. Every medical procedure and every new bag of drugs attached to the IV requires the patient to state his or her name and birthdate. I'm sure I've said it a thousand times since June.

Sounds like this is her first encounter with chemo, but she's staying pretty cheerful. "Is this the stuff that'll make my hair fall out?" she asks. I want to tell her how to do fun things with scarves, but she's busy being introduced to the IV pole that will be her dance partner for the next few hours.

The cubicles all have little televisions tucked into the warm wood half-wall, and some patients pass the time by watching. Last time I was here, the guy in the next cubicle was watching a Nascar race. It's tempting to draw conclusions about cancer patients based on their viewing choices, but what would they say about me?

10:55
The IV monitor beeps. "Infusion complete," it proclaims, which would be good news except that it's referring only to the infusion of pre-chemo medications. The really nasty stuff starts right now and lasts until it's through. My first chemotherapy session lasted only a few hours because an allergic reaction caused the first drip to be aborted; the second round lasted three or four hours. I'm not sure how long this one will take, but the nurses have assured me that I'll be done in time for my 2:00 radiation treatment. Radiation waits for no man. Or woman either.

Funny: I feel alert, but the connection between my intentious and my fingers seems to be slipping...I'm leaving letters out of words and hitting other letters that have no excuse for intruding where they are not wanted. This is the chief drawback on these drugs: they slow me down in ways that are not immediately obvious, so at the moment I'm probably not the most reliable source of information on how I'm doing.

11:04
Time to check the online discussion board to see how my honors students are doing. Three messages already! Class just started four minutes ago! Students are piling on that question about making humor out of human suffering. Can't wait to see how the rest of the class responds.

Many machines are beeping. Hey, let's get out the iPod! Music to soothe the savage beast. Not that there are any savage beasts here. We're just sick people doing our best to be nice regardless of how we feel.

11:45
Still immersed in my students' online discussion. They're doing great! I jumped in to comment at one point and I'll do it again in a minute. Meanwhile, my IV gently drips.

12:20
I've read all my students' comments and added a few of my own. They've been eagerly debating why humor about machines is so common: are we frightened of machines or trying to assert our superiority over them? Or do our interactions with machines simply provide many opportunities to expose our incompetence to the world? When it comes to technology, we slip on metaphorical banana peels every day of the week. Who wouldn't laugh?

The machine I'm hooked up to right now makes me feel incompetent every time I need to get up and visit the rest room. It's not possible to sit here absorbing fluids for hours without eventually needing to get up and go, but the process is cumbersome: unplug IV monitor from wall; waltz IV pole carefully through the nest of power cords mingling promiscuously on the floor of the cubicle; drag IV pole over to rest room; figure out how to get both of us in there and shut the door--and then get ready to repeat the whole process in reverse.

One of these days I expect to see a cancer patient waltzing with an IV pole on Dancing with the Stars. Too bad Ted Kennedy's not available for the part...

Here we go again, making humor out of human suffering. Tasteless, tacky, irreverent, or none of the above?

12:30
Someone nearby is watching a soap opera. I can't see it but I can hear it: dramatic soap music loudly announcing impending doom, stilted dialogue dealing with situations even stranger than the life of a cancer patient. What is it this time, return of the long-lost twin? Blackmail of a foot-fetishist whose stash of stolen flip-flops is uncovered by the neighbor's dog? I can't hear enough to know what's going on but I refuse to move any closer because those soap-star faces creep me out. They look shiny, stretched and stitched to the point of immobility, like space aliens--or space-alien action figures manufactured from space-age polymers. They just don't look like real people.

12:45
The little gray cells are slowing down. Time to do something mindless. Let's load some more music onto the iPod, shall we? And how amazing is it that I can sample, select, and download music to my cute little Shuffle while wedded to an IV pole at the cancer center?

I'm due for radiation a little over an hour from now, but there's still quite a lot of fluid in that IV bag. I've seen people waltzing their IV poles into the radiation rooms, but I don't look forward to taking my strong but silent dance partner on that long a journey. It's hard enough stumbling around on my own two left feet, but the IV pole has five. Come to think of it, five feet ought to make the pole more proficiently mobile than I am. Maybe I'll let the IV pole carry me over there. Your lead, sir.

1:15
Serious beeping this time. Infusion complete? The nurse checks: "Just a few more drops." But the end is near! I'll be done in plenty of time for radiation, and I don't even feel awful. Slow, yes, and not entirely connected to reality, but not awful. Awful comes later. Trust me: you'd rather not know.

My ears are full of Chopin, a condition for which a doctor ought to be able to prescribe something. If Chopin were a medical disorder, what symptoms would it produce?

The nurse tells me my color looks good, but my appearance has changed enough to bring tears to the eyes of one colleague yesterday and to spark absolutely no recognition in the eyes of another. Ye shall know me by my scarves.

1:30
The nurse unhooks the IV and flushes out the medi-port with saline solution, which immediately creates in my mouth a flavor I can only describe as antiseptic, as if I've been gargling Lysol. This is good news: I'm done with the drip and I can move on to radiation without the assistance of my dance partner.

Now I'm in the radiation waiting room, a cozy space enlivened by the presence of a large aquarium where colorful tropical fish swim for my amusement. They're much more entertaining than Regis and Kelly and far less likely to babble. Bubble, yes; babble, no.

Radiation is easy: lie still and let the machine do its work. At first all the beeping and buzzing were a bit disconcerting, but after eight treatments, I find it easy to block out the noise and fall asleep in the arms of Elekta the elegant linear accelerator.

The women who work here are young and petite, but when it's time to man-handle my body to make sure ever inch is lined up correctly, they have no problem shoving me around like a sack of potatoes. I'd like to see them try that when I'm not lying flat on my back half naked. Then again, maybe not: they have me outnumbered.

The route to Elekta's lair takes me down a nondescript medical office hallway and then down a narrow corridor decorated like the entrance to Grandma's parlor: homey pictures line the wall around a faux brick fireplace topped with dried flower arrangements and family photos. So warm and inviting and homelike...but then I turn the corner and find myself in Sick Bay on the Enterprise. I wonder whether cognitive dissonance is an essential part of the treatment.

1:45 and I have nothing to say. Tired of waiting. Feeling sleepy. Time to shut down for a little while.

2:15 and I'm done! I drifted off to sleep during radiation and then jerked awake moments later, which sort of messed up all that careful positioning. Fortunately, Elekta had reached the last stage in her enigmatic machinations.

Now I'm outside on the sunny courtyard waiting for my wonderful colleague to collect me. Feeling good so far. A little wobbly, a little warped, but not at all awful.

But if I did feel awful, I would strive to make some humor out of it. It's hard to make humor out of a long day of waiting and boredom, but awfulness...well, if I can't make humor out of suffering, then what's it good for?