Don't Let Me Die In A Motel 6 or One Woman's Struggle Through The Great Recession (24 page)

As an academic
, Dr. Pilgrim liked to
pontificate
.
Seeing he had
rapt students
, h
e launched
into his lecture.
“
For
a Stage 2 invasive breast cancer patient,
we recommend
Adjuvant systemic therapy.
You will be on a regimen of TCH
chemotherapy
, or
Taxotere, Carboplatin
and Herceptin.
Herceptin is not a chemo drug per s
é
, but we’ve had great success treating HER2-
positive
cases
.
Those infusions will last for a year.”

I grimaced.

“You will be given all three drugs for a period of
six
weeks.
Once a week is usually
tolerated.”

“Usually?”

He looked over his glasses.
“Some patients
struggle
with chemotherapy, but we’ve found that most of them are able to successfully complete the
sessions
.”

“Yippee.
”

“I’
ve put you in the computer
–
”
I thought he’d end with the line when they fired
Abe Lastfogel from William Morris
,
“
and you’ve been found wanting.”
Instead, he
showed me a piece of paper with a
colored
graph.
Not
PowerPoint
fancy
.
“The more therapy you receive, the better your odds of survival.
If you agree to chemotherapy and subsequent radiation, you
r
odds of non-re
cur
r
ence in
the next
ten
year
s are
87%
.”

My dad looked skeptical.
He hated doctors.

“This is not a decision to be made
lightly.
I cannot force you to pursue any treatment course.
The decision must come from you.”
I thought he sounded Yoda-like.
This must be question and answer
period
.

“Doctor,
for me
it’s a no-brainer.
I want to raise my odds.
I’ll do what
ever
I have to do.”

He smiled.

“What about the side effects?
I
hear
they can be terrible
.”

“I’m happy to report they’re not as bad as
t
he old days.
We have new drugs now to control nausea and vomiting.
I’ll
s
ubmit a referral to get you on Neulasta after your first infusion.
This will boost your white blood
cell count
and counteract neutropenia.”

“Can’t you do it now?”

“No.
The insurance insists that we wait to mak
e sure your white count drops.
Of course, for every patient, this is the case.”

“
Paging Franz Kafka
,
” I
mumbled.
The Health Care shibboleth again.
I
then
turned to the subject I dreaded
most of all.
“Is there any way to avoid hair loss?”
My hair, when straightened, hung down to the middle of my back, and it had taken years to get
there
.
I feared that like Sampson, I would lose something
with my hair.
My
Me-Ness.

“No.
I know of no effective way to prevent this.
Cancer
is comprised of
fast-growing cells,
and
chemo
drugs are
unable to distinguish between
the
se
and other fast-growers,
like
hair and fingernails.
Most of my patients lose their hair on the fifteen day after the first
session
.”

“Maybe this will resist.” I twisted a thick curly lock.

“
I’ve seen others with hair just a
s
thick, and I’m afraid it all went.”

“But I’m more stubborn, and I’m mean.”

He laughed.
I must have been
a fun
patient.
At least I wasn’t making a scene.

August 17th
.
The day had finally come.
We drove to Dr. Pilgri
m’s office, just minutes away from
Rachel’s
.
I was led into the lab.
The first step would be
attaching
a
plastic
tube
to the
virgin
port.
It hurt.
If you’ve ever had a needle
stuck
into your chest,
you know what I’m
talking about
.
I was escorted by a nurse
(herself a survivor)
to
a private room which contained a large
recliner
.
At the side was a metal IV tree, which would
become
a familiar sight
.
They covered me with a blanket; shot Benadryl through the IV, then the TCH:
very slowly
, to make sure there wasn’t a reaction.
I
was surprised that
the chemo drugs were translucent – there was no color at all.
Like C02, before it kills you.
The infusion
took five hours.
I feel asleep in the
recliner.

I wanted to pretend that everything was normal – that I
didn’t have a
sign
on my forehead
reading “
Hi, I Have Cancer
.”
Nigel and I drove up to
ward
Solvang
, stopping at Anderson’s Split-Pea Soup.
I had always loved this place:
memories of family vacations and Traveler’s Specials soothed
my battered body
.
But I found I didn’t really have an appetite.
Disappointed, we went to the Chumash Casino, where I had an urge to play the slots.
This was fun, and distracting.
On the ride home, my stomach started churning, and the taste of split-pea lingered, unsplit, in my mouth.

Two days later.
My parents had come to visit, and we
all
sat at Weiler’s
Deli,
where I had ordered (cautiously, I thought)
a bowl of
matzoh ball soup.
We were talking around the table, when I
t
hrew up, just like that.
There was no Japanese
Prime Minister
to rest my head on, a la George Bush
I
, so I ran into the bathroom.
It was happening
, just as the Web
had
foretold.
The
noxious
Chemo Cocktail
had been s
haken and not stirred
.
So much for my “normal” life
.

I spent the next few days with my head in various places (I know what you’re thinking – for shame!):
the toilet; the wastebasket.
Two
anti-nausea prescriptions did not do a fucking thing.
All my life, I’
d dreaded chemo.
To me, it
was a
n unrevealed mystery
,
like the
thirteen
Stations of the Cross
.
At Overlake for my Mammosite, I’d seen chemo patients wheeled out from
the hidden recesses of their rooms
.
They were
emaciated
, skin cracking,
a page from The Book Of the Dead.
Now
I was among them
.
My worst fear
realized
.
My
personal Room 101.

August 24th.
Back to Dr. Pilgrim’s
for an infusion of Neulasta.
Another
needle stuck
in the port. The insurance must have conceded that my white cell count had dropped.
That must have hurt
them
more than the
fat
one-inch
needle hurt me.

“All things considered, I think you’re doing
quite
well.”
The doctor was cheerful as usual.
“Nothing out of the ordinary.”

“
I
’m just throwing my guts up.”

“That’s not uncommon.”

“Either is
unprotected sex,
but I don’t want to do that either.”

August 25
th
.
My day of cancer infamy
.
I started to feel sicker,
sicker than I’d ever been in my life.
It was like having a giant hand inside
you,
slowly
twisting your intestines
.
I had massive
diarrhea
, triggered if I
so much as
took a sip of water.
I felt a low-level rumble in my stomach, a cesspool of
constantly churning
sludge.
I went back and forth to two places all day:
my bed (
a Murphy
fold
-down, courtesy of the Oakwoods
) and the bathroom.
I am now
an expert
on Amtrak’s
Empire Builder
,
thanks to
Nigel’s
toilet reading.

I hadn’t been able
to eat for several days
,
and
I was getting weak
er
.
Nigel took my temperature. 99.9
.
He paged Dr. Pilgrim
and handed me the phone
.

“You need to get to an E.R.,
now.
You’re in the beginning stages of neutropenia.
Y
ou’ll have to go to Sinaloa, since they’re the ones on your insurance plan.”

I would have agreed to
sneak into
Mexico
, if
peyote
could stop the pain.
Nigel bundled me into his Ion.
I don’t remember the
half-hour ride.

They whisked me in in moments, foregoing the usual forms.
This really must have been serious.
I hadn’t
even
been asked
for
The
Sacred
Card.

What, you ask, is neutropenia?
And why is a low-grade
fever
such a big
damned
deal?
Let me give the precise medical
synopsis
:
it means that
our
immune system has turned to shit, and, like AIDS patients, we are very much at risk of infection, even death.
Hence the bustle at Sin
a
loa
Hospital
, not exactly known for
speed
.
One time, I had brought Nigel in when he was literally covered in blood (abstracted, he had run into a tree branch in a Target parking lot.
I know.
).
There’d been no one at the E.R. desk.
“Help!
Help!!” I yelled.
Fin
ally, a sleepy guy appeared, looking resentful.

This time, I was
immediately
placed
in
the E.R. ward
.
The nurs
e had
been
an EMT and
she’d
seen it all, but the
re was one thing
she didn’t know
:
how to
access
my chemo port.
She tried, and drew lymphatic
fluid.
Not good.