Chapter 1: Life in the "Chemo Room"

How many ways can you say scared? Terrified, apprehensive, afraid, nervous, freaked out--just plain scared.

For the two months since my breast cancer diagnosis, I've been riding an emotional roller coaster over the prospect of undergoing chemotherapy. Chemotherapy. You know, the treatment where they pump you full of poisons to kill cancer cells and your hair falls out and you vomit for days at a time and the cure is nearly as deadly as the disease. That treatment.

I had a mastectomy about one month ago, and the surgery was not nearly as frightening to me as the thought of chemo. I was most upset by the thought of losing my hair--a billboard that shouts "I have cancer"--and the fatigue. "How fatigued?" I asked endlessly. "Will I be able to work? Play with my kids? Keep things running at home?"

My lymph nodes were negative, which means the cancer probably hadn't spread beyond the breast. I wanted to just walk away after the mastectomy and be done with it. Take my chances. Without chemo, those chances are 30 percent that the cancer will reoccur--and 70 percent that it won't. With chemo that number increases to 85 percent. But it's all numbers. There are no guarantees.

Week One in the "Chemo Room"
The "chemo room" at the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle is not a friendly place. Someone has made an effort to make it seem friendly: Metallic stars and chains of paper cranes hang from the ceiling, and the six reclining chairs are pink--a friendly color--but it is not a friendly place.

Before I got there, my mental image of the place was of a group of people sitting knee-to-knee in a circle, IVs dripping powerful drugs into our arms as we shared our life stories.

It's not like that at all. Each patient is isolated behind half-drawn curtains. The six pink chairs are all full, but no one makes eye contact with me. I manage to catch one woman's eye and smile, but she turns away without responding. Everyone looks pretty healthy; several people are wearing hats, although they seem to have hair under them.

It's a private place.

My nurse, Ann, gets me settled in a chair with my friend Elaine sitting to one side and asks about my surgery: "What kind of surgery? Which side?" (Jeez, doesn't the whole world know I lost my right breast on October 12, 1998? My own nurse doesn't know?)

"Right," I say, "I had a mastectomy on the right side," and Ann wraps my left arm in a warm towel to bring up the veins. While we wait, Ann lays out a tray of needles, tubes, plastic bags of saline solution and anti-nausea medication, and then a syringe of bright rosy-red doxorubicin, my chemotherapy drug.

A needle is punched into a vein in the back of my left hand (ouch!), and carefully checked. If the doxorubicin leaks into the tissues, it can cause tissue damage like a burn, I'm warned. First comes the saline, just to make sure everything is working, then the anti-nausea drugs, then finally, the syringe of doxorubicin, all through the same needle.

Ann gives this slowly, with pauses to run saline through the line. She talks nonstop throughout the 45 minutes it takes to give me the drugs. Calmly and cheerfully, she runs down the list of possible side effects. I have a printed sheet in my hand so I can follow along.

• Nausea and/or vomiting . . ."We'll give you pills to take at home". . .

• Red, pink, or orange urine, tears, or sweat. . .

• Hair loss (eyebrows, eyelashes, body hair, all of it). . .

• Mouth sores. . ."You won't have that one this week". . .

• Heart damage. . .

• Sore palms or soles of the feet. . ."Let's worry about that one later."

I try to pay attention and ask intelligent questions, but my eyes won't focus properly.

Finally, at 4:15 p.m., I'm done. I walk out, feeling a little spacey and lightheaded, but otherwise fine. I head to the pharmacy to pick up more anti-nausea drugs to take at home. (A few bad moments here when I hear about the side effects of one of those drugs: The pharmacist warns me that the drug Compazine can cause muscle spasms, sometimes so intense that they require other drugs to unlock the muscles so you can move. She's kidding, right?)

So far, though, it's anticlimactic. All that pink stuff went into my arm, but so what? I feel almost normal.

Waiting for the Drug
Elaine drops me at home, and I go in and wait for the drug to hit. My stomach is a little queasy, I'm not sure if it's the chemo or nerves. I have some soup and talk on the phone with a friend who has just heard about my cancer. She is more upset than I am.

I'm ignoring my kids. They don't seem quite real. At 7 p.m., I take my medicine, drink a glass of milk, pop out my contacts, and get into bed with a copy of Newsweek.

At 7:30, another friend, Pat, arrives to spend the night. We talk and fold laundry. I cuddle Robin, my younger son, who is crying over an argument with his brother, Akira.

At 9 p.m., I pee orange urine and get back into bed. My head hurts. My tears are not pink.

10:30, still awake. Head still hurts. No nausea, thank god.

Midnight. Still awake. I get up and read my cheat-sheet: If you are receiving chemotherapy and experience any of the following problems, call the clinic immediately. "Headaches," it says. I call. "Take Tylenol," the resident says. The only Tylenol in the house is the junior grape variety. I chew four chalky tablets and go back to bed.

Saturday. Not much sleep, but I feel OK. I clean house with my bird, Spot, on my shoulder, playing with my earring as always, while Pat takes the kids to Japanese class and does the grocery shopping. I spend the afternoon in bed, reading, still waiting for the drug to hit me.

Sunday. It hits. I feel rotten. My face is pale and puffy. I go out for a short walk, then back home and into bed. I'm tired and queasy, as if I have a bad case of flu. I try to be a good parent and play Scrabble with Robin, but after four turns, I'm done. Back to bed. The kids eat dinner, I eat crackers in bed. What a day.

Monday morning. My bird is dead. He died during the night. I have no idea why. I cry. Suddenly, I'd like to crawl back into bed and stay there for the next three months. Instead, I go to work and make light of the whole thing to my co-workers.

Tuesday. I feel a bit queasy at the smell of coffee, or when a bus goes by, belching diesel. Otherwise, I'm fine. Ready to go back in three more days and do it again.

@ Jeanne Sather 2006