Therapy Day One

I was very worried last night; the night before starting chemotherapy today. As I laid my body down in bed, I began thinking over the just completed day: punch list for the new house – 135 line items; boxes unpacked and broken down in the garage – 75; garage sale – three weeks out; Beau getting out of backyard – five times tonight; … And then my brain froze in a mild panic mode: chemo starts tomorrow.

I fixated on it. I mulled the what ifs. A flurry of thoughts blew haphazard through my consciousness. I grasped each fearful one for only moments but each was rich in terrifying texture. The floors of the chemo place are linoleum. The hallway is long and featureless. It feels like a good place for a cuckoo nest. It was scary because I didn’t know much about it except for what the blogs have to say.

My brain was playing tricks with me because I was scared. I was up-regulated. I was having pretty major anxiety. So I stepped up and took a Xanax.

For those of you who might not know, Xanax is a mild anti-anxiety prescription medication. It’s a confession of sorts for me to admit that I took it. We take pills for pain. We take pills for acne. We take pills to thin our blood. We take pills to avoid babies. But as I was raised, you don’t take pills for your brain.

I have decided that I don’t agree with how I was raised on this point. I have evolved, creatively. My logic is that the body works according to its staggering complexities in all the various organs, but each is part of the greater body. The kidneys are no less different or similar to the muscles than they are to the brain. In other words, if we can figure out how to treat various symptoms in the kidneys, and we have, then we can also figure out how to treat various symptoms in the brain, and we have.

So I took a Xanax. This was after putting down my kids who were all very excited after Will’s basketball team beat their arch rivals to progress to the private-school championship tomorrow. It was a huge game for them, and upon winning you would have thought they just won the World Cup versus the Germans. We listened to sport rap music turned up to eleven on the way to get team burgers. It was a wonderful experience for me as a spectator. But the bottom line is that it was late when we finally got the boys wound down and into their respective beds.

Then after a few minutes Will and Cate came slyly out to the new kitchen island. We each ate a cookie and talked. I drank a glass of milk. They went to bed. I walked up stairs and around my room – The GillhamAttic. I took Beau out back to watch as he sauntered from tree to tree finding the perfect spot to mark his new backyard. I listened to the breeze. I appreciated the new light falling through our oak tree’s limbs onto the ground. I prayed. I circled the pool. I looked at the white stones I helped place on the north and south sides of the house. In essence, I stopped to meditate and breathe. Life slowed down … bed was a more welcoming thought. I laid my body down again, and this time, the thoughts were more clear.  

What is “chemo?” For the chemo patient it is a miscellaneous grouping of effects on their bodies that form into specter or champion depending on how you let it coalesce in your consciousness. My particular brand of common drug side-effects are nausea, feeling lousy, and hair loss. The less common side-effects include kidney failure, liver failure, loss of hearing, and permanent lost of sensation in fingers and toes. The common side-effects are not too concerning to me since they are unpleasant but short-lived, but the less common ones are very worrisome as yet another long-term life-changing difference in my body.

But notice the word “side” which is appended to those effects. They are not the main effect. They are not why these drugs are coursing through my veins now as I write.

The main effect is that my drugs kill cancer. They wear a white cape, ride a white horse and deliver an iron-clad boot kick to cancer’s ugly head. They are healing me. My body will feel some difficulties, but at the end of this, my cancer should be greatly diminished. I am counting on that, focusing there. I chose to look at my chemotherapy as more therapy than chemo.

The day was uneventful, as they said it would be. I took three liters of fluid through my port today. I dutifully reported on my bladder’s activities. The nurses dutifully informed us of the preventative measures they put in place for nausea. I was there from 8:30 to 4:45… a long day to have to sit still. It was a good beginning though. Debra and I did well. We had a wonderful, beautiful visitor who brought us lunch. We talked pretty much all day. And we wrote some too…

I am sitting at my new kitchen counter again tonight, finishing this post. The day was long; twelve more to go with one every other week for six months. I am praying they will not be hard. I am circling that in my mind. I am anticipating the main effect.