A Day In The Life Of A Chemo Patient

9:00 AM – Ariived at the Cancer Clinic, check in with reception and fill out the necessary forms to have them shoot me up with drugs.

10:00 AM – I make my way to the treatment room. A very nice nurse tells me all about the procedure as she begins to prep my IV for me. She is quick about it and before too long, she has the needle in me and the bags are hung up on the IV pole for me. She tells me this will take about 2 hrs to 2.5 hrs to complete. I know the drill and tell her as much with a polite smile.

11:00 AM – I am half way through. So far so good. Sometimes you can feel a little sick halfway through the treatment which makes things a little more complicated. Aside from a slight stinging sensation at the point of injection, I am fine. More bored than anything else as I flip through a magazine. I wonder to myself what my rents are up to and how Caleb is doing.

12:10 PM – The nice nurse returns and unhooks me. My treatment is complete and I am free to sit and wait until they can find me a room for the night. I have opted to stay on the advice of my Oncologist who is apparently using a different Chemo cocktail for me this time. He wants to make sure I don’t have any outrageous side effects. Knowing the drill, I opt to drink small amounts of water and skip a heavy lunch in favour of some soup, crackers, and jello. My hope is that it tastes just as good coming back up as it did going down. I have learned that eating heavy well doing a treatment is a recipe for projectile vomiting. One learns quickly to drink water as much as one can and skip the apple pie for dessert.

3:20 PM – I am assigned to a room with another patient. He is nowhere near my age and he is asleep. This means two things, I am going to be bored out of my skull and wont have anyone to talk to for the most part. I am thankful for the television even though daytime TV is not nearly as good as primetime. I glance at my watch and secretly wonder if Fatcat laid the smack down on Scooter in game 7 in or if it was the other way around. The results will impact a deal I have on the table in terms of whether or not I have a trade offer waiting for me or not.

5:00 PM – Its dinner time. They come around with the food trays. I am not feeling lucky so I go with the soup, crackers and Jello again. They give me the green jello and I immediately send it back asking for red. The thought of eating anything green makes my already nauseas stomach churn a little harder. The broth and crackers are nice, I again pray they stay put and tune into the 5PM news.

5:15 PM – a knock at the door makes me look up. Standing there, with a big smile is Caleb. I am completely shocked. I told him I was going in but never suspected he would bother to come. I click off the news and he grabs a seat on the side of my bed. I am overwhelmed…he really cares and suddenly, I am feeling a lot better…emotional, but better.

7:10 PM – Caleb is still with me but unfortunately my dinner is not. The nausea has started and much to my surprise, Caleb sticks with me the whole way, rubbing my back and reassuring me that I am going to be just fine. I am stunned…he could easily bail or have no part of this and yet he chooses to stand by me. When I make my return to the bed he tells me he plans on standing beside me the whole way because he knows he was the one who begged me to go back through this. I am happy, I think I may have truly found the one. It takes a special breed of person to be able to sit in a room with someone else when they are puking their brains out.

8:30 PM, 10:04 PM, 11:28 PM – More trips to the bathroom where dinner and I get reacquainted with each other. At this point however its more dry heaves than anything else. Caleb, tired but with me, continues to keep a watch over me. The nursing staff tell him he needs to leave to which he tells them that he is not going anywhere unless they want to remove him. I ask them to let him stay and they reluctantly allow it.

7:00 AM – I have no idea what time I fell asleep but I wake up to find Caleb half in and half out of a chair. He looks so cute sleeping in that chair and I feel bad for waking him up. He stretches, lifts himself up and gives me that big smile.

8:00 AM – breakfast arrives, I eat the eggs and the dry toast, drink the orange juice but skip the coffee. The Oncologist releases me after we book a return date for next week.

I have survived round 1 of my new Chemo regiment and I am making my way back to the shelter. Caleb is on his way to his class for recovering addicts. I will spend the most of today trying to recuperate and helping in the kitchen as much as I can. I still feel like a little bag of shit but I have been there and done that before so its nothing new.

Next week will be much of the same and this will continue for several weeks, maybe even months. In the end though, I have Caleb, I have hope, and I have my Blog. I am reminded of something I was once told, “We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give”

LiveSTRONG!