Susan G. and Me

 

Thank you Komen L.A. for the honor of a feature in your e-magazine. 

Baby. Crazy.

 

Baby. Baby. Baby. The little one I don’t have is invading my thoughts, haunting the equilibrium I am fighting to maintain.

Although he doesn’t say much at the time, my husband will later admit our inability to have another child will be, for him, the hardest residual side effect of my cancer.

Okay, so in our own ways, we’re both a little baby-crazy.

International or domestic adoptions through an agency cost upward of $20,000. And apparently, 1 in 5 couples has fertility problems; it seems there are more than enough families wanting to step in and take healthy babies here in the U.S. Our hope to help someone beyond ourselves through adoption is a little deflated by the apparent lack of need. Fees are less and need is higher for adoption through our county’s family services, but their children consist primarily of older, special needs, and siblings. These little ones really need homes and I would love to step in for such a child, but I question our ability to do so at this point in our lives. Do we have enough remaining fortitude for such a commitment as that?

I will continue to pursue adoption, whatever that looks like.

I will run through the women closest to me, imaging how they might feel about being a surrogate.

I loathe admitting, in desperation, I will concoct such outlandish scenarios as using one male relative on my side with a female relative on my husband’s side - as though these human beings, whom we love most, are impassive instruments.

I will sit at the park with my son and have absurd and disgustingly judgmental thoughts toward the happy, bouncing mothers of mulitples– in their yoga pants and ponytails, with their organic fruit snacks and expensive strollers. They don’t appreciate that baby. They should give it to me.

I’m joking, of course. But I’m marred with desperation.

Lord, I am praying, take this jealousy from my heart. Ease the consuming envy I feel toward every pregnant woman, toward every friend’s birth announcement…  toward every person living their normal life. Accepting my lot is an ongoing challenge, a difficult aim I am perpetually working toward.

Department of Oncology. Blah.

Living in the dormitories my freshman year of college, I spent a whole lot of time around 18 to 20-something year olds. Older adults were also a regular part of my sphere of contact. But children were rare. The sight or sound of a child on campus would make for an unexpected, welcome surprise.

Taking my son, Little H, to my Oncologist’s office is a bit like that. He’s an anomaly, a tiny body of life and health running (sometimes loudly) through a space that is uniform with sickness and old age. Eyes naturally rest upon him, the liveliest thing in sight. 

My oncologist’s suite is a particularly dark place, as places associated with pure awful tend to be. Tiny exam rooms curve around the front section, doctor’s and nurses’ stations form a bank of computers in the center, and a crowded row of chemo infusion chairs lines the back wall, forming one busy and bland circle of (primarily unpleasant) activity.

When I’m here without Little H, which is usually, I often feel the circle of gazes fall on me. My relative-youth draws attention among a population that is heavily skewed to an over-60 crowd. As I absorb stares, I imagine the brains of my compatriots taking-in my presence in this place and my bald head as confirmation that, yes, I am one of them. I too have befallen the tragedy of an interrupted life. I too am here to push back death.

But there is no tragedy in Little H; he is just life. 

In the small suite of ugliness, I want to share him with these patients and doctors. But at the same time, I want to shield him from the place.

He, of course, is oblivious to the weight of his surroundings. He lies with his face in the waiting room carpet and pushes his trucks around. He sets his half-eaten pear on the waiting room chair and then picks it back up to continue eating. He uses the pen from my purse to draw on the paper sheeting they put over the exam table. He rests his head right on the yellowing pillow of the table, just to the side of the protective cover. He serves me imaginary cheeseburgers and strawberry ice cream off the stainless steel over-the-bed-table. He touches every knob, screw, and jar in the place. 

He keeps my attention on him, just where it should be.

These people in here probably are not awakened from their nightmares and hot flashes by a little voice singing, “The Wheels on the Bus.” They likely are not in a stage of life where a small person is relying on them, every waking day. They may not have such a constant reminder that life is fast and beautiful.

Sometimes I share him with them, even if just for a moment as we move through this place.

So, So True

I'm afraid I don't know where to credit this, as I haven't found the original source. But it's too hilariously true to not share.

My Pal Soy Patty

Time for breast MRI number two, the indicator of how effective my treatment thus far has been. (In other words, is the chemo shrinking the tumor?)

The Radiologist is the same one I had for my first MRI a couple months ago. We remember each other. She’s about my age, maybe a few years older. She wears her hair tied back like I used to, she makes a lot of eye contact, and she bows a little when she says goodbye. I wonder if she remembers me more by my face or by the cancerous images she views on her screen. Anyway, I like her.

Today she has me in her office to start the IV, through which she’ll insert dye contrast during the last scans. Thankfully, the needle goes in easy enough and we’re left chatting for a few minutes before the machine is available. 

She’s looking over my charts and commenting on my height to weight ratio. “I’m 130 pounds too! Actually, 135; I just gained 10 pounds,” she tells me. “But I have nooooo muscle. I’m just like a big, thick soy patty, or something.” 

I laugh at her analogy.  She continues to describe her lack of exercise and comments enviously on my toned legs. I’m a little stupefied at the irony of her coveting anything at all about my body or health at the moment.

Cancer doesn’t follow clean rules about who will get it and when. It will defy conventions on prior health, age, gender, or even family history. It’s not predictable or understandable. There are things we can and should do to bring our risk factors down, but even so, cancer, like most other diseases, can creep up on anyone, at any time. So, while I may be a lean fish next to my soy patty pal here, I’m still the one with a needle in my arm and cancer in my chest.

I climb on the table to lie face-down, as I’m directed. There’s a white, bowl-shaped head rest at the top that fills my forehead with painful pressure as soon as I settle into it; it feels like the entire weight of my body is concentrated into the space between my eyebrows. The bowl also confines the flow of air to my face - not an ideal situation for a person suffering from nausea. I’m imagining vomiting into all that white and still having to hold still for the remainder of the tests. 

The prickles of a hot flash descend not long after I’ve been inserted in the MRI tube. I can feel the sweat collecting at each hair follicle remaining on my head – all 12 of them. The flush of heat severely challenges my ability to remain still.

I can do this. This is a small challenge. I’m picturing floating in a cool pool of water… diving below the surface, the calm, the quiet, the water muffling the loud banging and clanging of the MRI machine.

“Here comes the dye,” says Soy Patty through the intercom. A strong chemical odor wafts to my nostrils just as I feel the liquid being pulsed into the vein of my right arm.  My weak stomach is fluttering; I feel so sick I actually laugh. Yes, I really am lying uncomfortably in an MRI machine, with bruised veins, sick from chemotherapy, and having a hot flash. This really is my life.

The imaging only takes about 15 minutes and then I’m rolled out and allowed to stand dizzily on my own two feet. I receive Soy Patty’s small bow and best wishes, get my “toned” but unfortunate self dressed and head out with a bright, red indentation smack between my eyes. 

4 to 6 = 6

Amongst the barrage of un-lovely information imparted upon me at Medical Plaza 2nd Home, I am enlightened that “four to six rounds of chemotherapy” does not actually mean I have the chance of being done after four rounds. Rather, it apparently means four to six before my surgery. Six, is what they meant all along; two just may come post-surgery.

Thank you for this pleasant elucidation, roughly three months late.

I want to slap every last one of those doctors and nurses for not clarifying that I do not, in fact, have any chance of being finished after four rounds. (Not really. But somehow saying I want to slap them makes me feel like I'm expressing the frustration and angst I'm feeling.)
Setting my sights upon being done after four was futile.

Two more rounds; six more weeks, here I go.