Wednesday: March 14, 2012

After two weeks of post-chemo hell, I've begun to recover. I won't have much time to enjoy it. It's back into the fire next week for my fourth and final round of treatment.
 
I hope “final” is not wishful thinking and that this awful medicine works. Most times it does not. Joanne, my friend at Kaiser, is evidence of that. She's been getting various forms of chemo for almost a year. She desperately wants to get better so she can enjoy the retirement she dreamed of having. It doesn't look likely; she's not getting better.

I believe I've got a chance to emerge from this hell I'm in. My tumor is now a dessicated bit of scar tissue I hope has entombed those cancer cells forever.
 
Unlike Joanne, this is my one and only shot at being cured. If it doesn't work, I'm done. I'm okay with that. Mary Lou is, too, which makes me grateful.

I'm not sure why I've delayed telling this story. It's an unpleasant but important piece of my cancer narrative.

On Day 3 of Round 3 of chemo, Robin was assigned as my nurse du jour. I decided to share my good news as she established my IV line.
 
“The tumor is pretty much gone,” I said.

“Problem is, it always comes back,” she replied nonchalantly.

She instantly realized what she had just said. Her face reflected the horror she must have seen in mine. She tried to take it back by telling me a lame story about a lung cancer patient she knew who went 11 years before his cancer came back. Nice try, idiot.
  
As she bloody well should have, she tiptoed around me the next couple hours.

“It always comes back.”

Those words haunt me. They remind me in a loud, quavering voice that the monsters under the bed are quite real.

Mary Lou called Robin the next day and, in a devastatingly calm and cold voice that even I fear, reminded her of her utter stupidity. Robin tried to apologize, but Mary Lou was not in a forgiving mood. The damage had been done.
     
“It always comes back.”