Taxol No. 1: "Better living through chemistry"

At chemo on Friday, my roomie, her husband, my friend Jessica and the nutritionist were all engaged in a spirited discussion about Ethiopian culture and lifestyle, when the Benadryl in my IV hit my system.

I realized I had an important point to contribute to the high-level discourse.

“Hey, guys,” I interrupted. “Hey, I feel like I’m floating. It’s like I’m on the ceiling looking down at all of you.” I groped for the right phrase to capture the experience and was proud when I concocted the perfect original description. “It’s, it’s like far out.”

They all turned to me politely. Bernadette, the nutritionist, who has years of experience with chemo patients, was the first to react. She rolled her eyes and a huge smile spread across her face.

“Better living through chemistry, eh, Carolyn?” she said. “Just wait until tonight when the steroids kick in. Then you’ll be hyper.”

Finally, finally after all these weeks of drugs that cause exhaustion, nausea and
various aches and pains, finally, I’ve scored a decent drug. Something downright, dare I say, recreational.

Intravenously administered Benadryl, I think I love you.

People keep asking, “Why don’t you get yourself some medical marijuana?”

Clearly I’d qualify, since you can get a prescription for it with a hangnail. But I gave up pot after freshman year because it triggered too much paranoia. Faithful readers of this blog know that I’m already doing a perfectly fine job becoming a paranoid wreck without any pharmaceutical intervention.

Actually I have done really well with not dabbling in paranoia over the past couple of weeks. I’ve stopped Googling medical sites, and I didn’t even have to have Mark install child-monitoring software on my laptop.

Still, there was a paranoia trigger at chemo.

An hour into my treatment, suddenly a nurse bolted past our door, soon followed by three or four other nurses, all running flat out. “Something’s happening,” said Vivian, my roommate, looking scared. “I’ve never seen that before.” A loudspeaker crackled. “Code Indigo in the treatment center,” a voice intoned. What, they think cancer patients can't translate “indigo” into “blue”? From my years of “ER” viewing, I knew Code Blue means cardiac arrest. Vivian and I looked at each other; we were both close to tears. I could tell we were thinking the same thing: This was a sobering reminder that a lot can go wrong when you pump poison into someone’s veins.

I’m now on to the second half of chemo, getting a drug called Taxol, every week for 12 weeks. It’s derived from the bark of the Pacific Yew. A cancer-support group buddy dropped off a branch from her yew tree “to propitiate the spirits of the forest who gave us this drug” as she poetically put it. Taxol’s main side effect is neuropathy, and to forestall that I’m getting weekly acupuncture and have a whole new set of supplements to choke down. Taxol also can cause severe allergic reactions, hence the IV Benadryl as well as the steroid, Decatron.

Over Thanksgiving, I allowed myself to take a little break from the Cancerverse, indulging in a diet soda now and then, being less scrupulous about the gallons of water I’m supposed to drink, skipping some of my vitamins and generally just trying to feel more normal. When the holiday was over, I didn’t get back on track.

Bernadette took one look at my lab results and called me out.

“You’re not drinking enough water,” she said right away. “Look how your uric acid levels are elevated.”

A girl can’t get away with anything around here.