Chemo

By Betsey Koehler

I had breast cancer. No one ever tells you how to phrase that… is it I “HAD” or is it I “HAVE?” I chose the former, partly out of optimism and partly because it just comes out that way naturally. It’s been an experience, and not one that I either recommend or would choose again, given a choice.

I looked at the breast from my owner’s-eye view, and asked it aloud, “What were you thinking, here? I’ve known you since you were flat! We’ve grown up together!” But it never answered. I’m pretty sure it was ashamed of itself. I had a lumpectomy (was there ever a goofier name for an operation?) to be followed by 8 cycles of chemotherapy and radiation.

I was going to be just the BEST patient ever to endure the indignities of the chemo. First of all, once you read the little pamphlets they give you on the possible side effects, you have to watch something more soothing on TV that can calm your nerves enough for you to sleep. Something like Nightmare on Elm Street, or Jaws. I had been very lucky. Though my tumor was not a really small one, the cancer hadn’t progressed to the nodes. This mattered little to the nodes, who were by now lounging in node heaven. That operation left me with a numb armpit, but then, I could not really recall using my armpit to do a lot of feeling. I could live with that.

Next, I had a porta-cath put into my chest. It’s a rubber gasket with a little hose that goes into an artery. Aside from qualifying me as a major appliance, it was a great thing… not to have people dousing for veins every time they put something in, or take something out. I have small veins… evidence of God’s sense of irony, given the size of my behind. I had decided on the course of ACT… Adriamycin, Cytoxin and Taxol. It’s an aggressive chemo, but I’m of stoic Yankee stock, and I was sure it wouldn’t get me down. I should have noticed that the word “toxin” was right in the name. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

I got my first A/C on September 1. I looked forward to it with all the same joyful anticipation with which I plunged into each new school year as a child, which is to say, none. But, I had great family and friends to support me, and I went in there prepared to overcome. A/C likes you to come in with that attitude. It takes special pleasure in demolishing your illusions of stoicism and reducing you to a quivering mass of Jell-O. I had given up on the pamphlets, reasoning that if I knew what might happen, I would make it happen. This is flawed thinking, I know. If things worked that way, I could read about winning the lottery, and run right down to pick up the check.

The first thing I noticed, and hated, was the smell of the A/C. Not as it went in, but as it went out, in every bodily fluid I produced. How could anything that looked like cherry Kool-Aid be that obnoxious? I didn’t have a lot of nausea; I was on a trial for a new med to control that. I got sick because I couldn’t eat anything. In all of my 44 overweight years, nothing had stopped me from eating. I could eat; it’s just that everything tasted like something you would never want to taste. Fill in your own word there. Okay, I could live with that.

For a full day, I was insane, ill tempered, confused, and odd-colored. The next day, the side effects set in. I was lucky enough to have my mother care for me. She is a former nurse, and an experienced inflictor of care. She’s also a survivor of breast cancer. She had radiation following her lumpectomies (it’s even goofier in the plural). She took good care of me when people were annoying me with complex, impossible-to-answer questions, such as, “What do you want to eat?” and “Are you awake?” Mom tried very hard not to take it personally when I told her the scrambled eggs tasted like burning tires. Come to think of it, everything tasted like burning tires. I got through the first one, complete with some mystery side effects. I say that, because they are the kinds of things that the oncologist ascribes to the vague category of “Adriamycin can do that.” I now know that if I went in there telling them that one leg was longer than the other, the replay would have been, “Adriamycin can do that.”

I was on my way, and with each successive treatment, I found out many of the things it really does do. Of course, I lost my hair, which might have traumatized me, had I had lovely, shiny, Breck-girl tresses. As it was, I had short, fine, thin hair. It actually amused me to show people the “magic trick” I could do, by running my hand into my hair and coming out with a major clump. I would drive around in my car, the sunroof open, letting go handfuls of hair, thinking it was very biodegradable. Then, it was all gone, and I could see my little shiny head. It’s not a bad head, as heads go, and it’s adorably round. I may well will it to some bowling association in the far-off future. And my hair will be back someday, so I can live with that.

I do miss my eyelashes, though. It enhances my genderless alien look right now and I still want to look feminine. Good things happened to, oddly enough. My nails grew beautifully, long and hard, instead of flimsy. I had eczema for many years, and it was gone! And, since I have been thrown headlong into menopause by the chemo, no more unreasonable feminine product expenses. Well, “Adriamycin can do that”!

I made it through four cycles, and was pleased to hear the oncologist say that Taxol would be easier. I wonder now if he had ever given anyone Taxol before. Maybe he subscribes to my earlier theory of self-fulfilled prophecy. If I thought it would hurt, it might. It did. Without any regard whatsoever for my expectations, it hurt. I had pains in my legs that led me to believe they were going to produce baby legs somehow. I’m no wimp, and my mother will tell you that I’m no wimp. Okay, so she’s my mother… but she saw me give birth twice without use of drugs. That paled by comparison to the leg pains, and the leg pains went on much longer. I know that it will fade from my memory. In fact, it already has, but I have one more Taxol, and that will more than likely jog my memory. Other joys of Taxol are numbness in the fingers and feet, which has not been very bad with me, and eyes that produce gallons of sticky tears, which delight in gluing my eyelids shut as I sleep. Even through these blurry eyes, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel now, though it’s probably the light of radiation still to come. I know now that, even when body parts commit mutiny, a sense of humor can still kick your butt in the right direction and I would make the same decision to take chemo, if faced with it again. Because… I can LIVE with that.

Betsey Koehler is a breast cancer survivor. She is a resident of Darien and the sister-in-law of Carol Fenn of The Newtown Bee.