Chemo Sesh #4: Reality Arrives

Chemo session number four. Saturday, 2/7/15.
Same drugs, same style, same shit. An RN manually pumps some of Vigo the Carpathian’s pink slime from Ghostbusters Two directly into my heart.

My mouth adopts the taste of moldy bleach (I realize how little sense this makes) for an hour and my pee turns into peach cobbler. It’s the same every time, I know what to expect now, or so I thought…

Liana happened to be here to witness the chemo administration this time. I didn’t think she’d be terribly impressed by the process considering that she’s one of the most intellectually gifted people that I know. It’s nothing terribly stimulating to experience so she was forced to entertain herself by rolling her eyes at every bad joke I made to my RNs. Par for the course.

The process ends, everybody clears out and I go to bed at a decent hour in order to rest up for my mother’s arrival the next day. The end, right?

NOPE.

Shit is starting to get real with my treatment, unfortunately….

The following is a gonzo-esque stream of consciousness that I minimally edited for sense, clarity, and verb tense (though I’m sure my actual editors won’t believe the verb tense editing actually happened). It’s a real-time expression of a developing panic attack (like this one). It started mildly enough for me to grab my laptop, thankfully, because these exercises in cathartic vulnerability are very helpful and liberating. I have also been told that they provide valuable insight into the psyche of a patient going through a traumatic episode….and at this point I’d literally walk naked into a pile of rusty thumbtacks if it would help my RNs and Doctors in any way. The following is for them:

2/8/15

It’s 8am Sunday and I woke up very disoriented and frankly…terrified. I remember being woken up earlier for my nightly vitals at 5am or so feeling more confused than I ever have in the hospital (thorozine episode notwithstanding). I don’t remember going to bed, but apparently I put myself down earlier than normal and wanted to get a good night’s rest. I think at one point I woke up to use the bathroom and completely split the difference between my handheld urinal and the toilet in a daze of semi-conscious dream-pee. There was no evidence to this in the morning, so I either had the comatose wherewithal to clean it up or one of my guardian RN angels helped me or it didn’t happen.

I somewhat remember waking up later very confused, not knowing what I did, not knowing how I got there, not knowing what happened. A wave of fear crept over me, despite there being daylight, and I didn’t feel feel like me. I still don’t feel like me at the time of writing this.

I’m drinking coffee in bed right now trying to put it back together,  I’m shaking and tearing up. at this point I have no explanation other than maybe the round of chemo I took last night finally hit me. The Doctors and RNs have mentioned that the chemicals have a cumulative effect on the body and last night could have been my first step into the depths of the chasm.

I’m crying and shaking and wiping tears off my face. My mouth feels like it is developing a chemo sore, I’m alone in my room with a pillow on my face trying to fight off hyperventilation and confusion.

I’m alone in here in this room and head. This isn’t the first time I’ve had a moment like this, but I think it may be the first fully chemically induced. I went to bed feeling slightly down and lost, spiritually and artistically, but I did not expect to wake up feeling so personally and consciously disoriented. Now I’m teetering on the brink of emotional/mental collapse. I’m breaking. I’m coming apart, having trouble holding it together. Heart is beating faster, tears, face contortion, muscle clenching. Just scream. FUCKING SCREAM.

One of my Doctors just just walked in. He either heard or sensed that I was in the fit of a panic attack and is making efforts to calm me down by telling me about how his son’s taste in music mirrors mine. He is trying to snap me back to reality, using the smelling salts of familiarity and giving me some tangibly familiar concept to grasp my brain fingers around. It’s working. I’m calming. Im breathing. I coming back. It’s getting better I think.

He reminds me that I’m on very powerful chemo drugs, despite their lack of side effects so far. He says he had a young patient like me who would mountain bike his way to the hospital to take them for the first few times and then hop back on his bike and head home. Eventually he had to be driven, and then he had to come in and out on a wheelchair. These are powerful substances that don’t hit you right away but rather take a combined toll and they are starting to add up inside of me. My hope is that my sense of humor, perspective and whatever else I’m bringing to this will hold up better than the mountain bike method. I’m not pressuring myself to ride in here as fast as I can doing jumps over the mental curbs, but I don’t intend to be rolled in and out on an emotional stretcher, either.

He’s not worried and assures me that I shouldn’t be either. He’s smiling, complimenting my room and my attitude and trying to keep me with him. He can sense that I’m on the brink, but he’s doing a great job and he’s firming his hand over my weak grasp, because he knows I’m rebuilding the strength to be able to hold on without his help. My voice is cracking and my face is clenching but he sees me trying to regain the persona, attitude, and perspective that I have cultivated over the last couple of weeks and he’s pulling me back to where I need to be. It’s working.

He left the room and things things are getting better by the moment, caffeine is helping. Talking to friends on the computer is helping, they are guiding my hands and feet on the tightwalk of my narrative and everything is calming down and starting to feel familiar again. I’m breathing, my blood is slowing. I’ve got it back, but today is going to be a harder day than normal.  I’m going to make the best of it, though. I’m going to turn this mind dump into a post, and hopefully we can all find some humor in it…though today was a good reminder that this isn’t some artsy fart writer’s retreat from the real world. I’m in here to heal myself first and foremost and any good I can do along the way for others is just an extremely happy side effect. I’m allowed to falter, I’m allowed to doubt, I’m allowed to fear, and I’m allowed failure but I am NOT allowed to give up on anything or anybody.

Ok, I’ve got this now. On with today…

So that’s what we have to expect now, I guess. It ain’t always gonna be pretty…