Chemo Round #2

I've always prided myself on being a quick study. So, after one session, I felt that I'd grasped the essentials of chemo and was ready to move on.

It's just how I felt when I first got my period. Okay, I'm initiated and now I know "what it means to be a woman" in the immortal words of the Kotex pamphlet the school nurse handed out. So I'm done. When the next month rolled around, the repeat performance came as an unpleasant surprise.

"What, again?" l whined. "Are you kidding?" The vista of all the endless reruns for the rest of my life seemed impossibly dreary. (The pamphlet had neglected to mention the concept of menopause, although, at age 13, that was decades off anyway.)

That same sinking feeling descended last night when I realized that, yes, we'd be returning to the cancer center today for Round 2.

Around noon, Mark chirped, "It's time to go, honey."

I hissed at him and went slinking off.

He finally tracked me down in the closet where I was sulking and hauled me out by the scruff of my neck as I yowled pitifully.

Why, yes, I am a crazy cat lady. How did you know?

We dragged ourselves into the cancer center 30 minutes late and proceeded to hurry up and wait.

The blood draw got complicated. The needle went into my port fine, but the blood wouldn't come out. After deep breathing and waving my arms didn't work, they proceeded to have me lie on my back, then my side, along with more deep breathing and arm waves. Just as they were getting ready to break out a drug to dislodge whatever was obstructing the tube inside me, it finally started to flow.

To block out the medical travails, I tried to immerse myself in a magazine, but I'd made the mistake of picking one of the glossy periodicals just for cancer patients that lie around the waiting room. Essentially they're beautifully printed catalogs of pharmaceutical company ads interspersed with cheery tips about eating brocolli and blueberries. My eyes lit on a two-page spread about Neulasta, the shot I get 24 hours after each chemo session. They'd thoughtfully listed the side effects in a normal type size, so I was able to ponder the ramifications of ruptured spleen ("A ruptured spleen can cause death," the ad helpfully said) and acute respiratory distress.

Oh, and they make Neulasta out of E coli.

Note to self: Stick with People or Entertainment Weekly.

We got a private room again, thanks to my having a cold. They could hardly risk having Typhoid Mary sneeze all over her chemo roomie.

The routine was familiar. After I settled into the recliner, my nurse Valerian hooked up the pre-chemo IV bags (steroids and other anti-nausea meds) and the machine began its monotonous pumping.

When it was time for the Big Show -- Adriamycin, the red death, the red devil -- Valerian robed up in his HazMat gown and gloves in front of us, while I resolutely engaged in the most life-affirming activity I could conjure up: Shopping online for stuff I don't need.

I was typing in my credit card number while he was unwrapping the two foot-long syringes of red death. I pressed "Buy" as he inserted the first syringe into the tube dangling from my chest. The confirmation e-mail came as he started to press the plunger.

"I'm not getting any blood return," he said, frustrated. "You're going to have to lie on your side again."

As we reclined the chair, Valerian explained what he meant. "I have to see the blood return (it shows up in a little spur tube off the main one) so I know it's going into your vein and not anywhere else. It could burn you seriously if it's outside your vein."

That's also why they administer Adriamycin manually. "The machine could do it, but it wouldn't know to stop in time if you feel burning," he said.

Dr. D and the nutritionist were both pleased with my blood counts. The white cells are hanging in there -- thanks, Neulasta and let's skip that spleen stuff -- the iron was good, everything was pretty normal. I was as proud as if I'd passed a tricky calculus final.

We were out of there in less than five hours. If history repeats itself, I can expect to have a few days of feeling under the weather.

Two sessions down; six more to go. I'm gonna woman up. I'm gonna get through this.