Monday: January 16, 2012 (Part One)

Sweet Virginia cigarette, burning in my hand.

You used to be a friend of mine, but now I understand.

You've been eating up inside me for some time.

Oh, in the morning there'll be hell to pay, somewhere along the line

In the morning there'll be hell to pay, somewhere along the line."

-- Billy Joel

1:05 p.m. Monday, Jan. 16, 2012.

Richard, the oncology nurse, plugs in the first bag of a platinum-based chemotherapy drug called Cisplatin into my IV line. Poison to kill the poison; an elixir that may or may not extend my life. I'm in the transfusion center of the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in beautiful Parma, Ohio.

It's a large room with 15 or so vinyl reclining chairs of various vintage and design lining three walls and wherever else they can be squeezed in. Dress up the place and give it some charm and it could be a waiting room for a tire store.

  

I have a corner office next to a cabinet containing sheets and blankets. In a room where privacy doesn't exist, it's the best I can do. And I am a private person, which makes this exercise an interesting and strange byproduct of the strange and overwhelming circumstances that I find myself in today and for the unforeseen future.

This Cisplatin is in a big bag. Richard tells me it will take about two hours to empty. Dr. Verma had talked to me that morning about the side effects. As many chemo drugs do, it causes your hair to fall out. Truly, that’s a minor inconvenience. There's neuropathy -- tingling and loss of feeling in the extremities – potentially permanent hearing loss and numerous other bad things.

I don’t care. Bring it on. It’s not like I have a choice. Guess what kids? I want to live.

Richard, a long, tall compassionate soul keeps a close eye on me. His concern seems genuine. But he and his fellow nurses are busy. Lots of sick people show up every day at Kaiser to do battle with cancer and other serious illnesses that require IVs and bags of medicine.

While a doctor had told me a month ago that I more than likely had cancer, the official diagnosis came less than two weeks ago from a surgeon who had hoped to cut out the tumor. But things were not quite so simple, he explained. The pathologist had found a confusing mix of non-small and possibly small cell cancer in the biopsy.

They needed to send the biopsy elsewhere, the surgeon said. He said a finding of non-small cell would be “good.”

Small cell, which has a nasty habit of spreading like wildfires in a dry wind, are not so good. Surgery is not an option. Nice choices. Then again, neither was 35 years of cigarettes. 

  

I received a call three days ago – Friday, Jan. 13 -- from Dr. Ravi Verma, the oncologist I’d met just the day before. He confirmed what everyone expected. I had hit the lung cancer daily double: small cell and non-small cell. No surgery for me. He said he’d seen three such cases in almost 20 years of practice.

“Mark, I need you to come in and begin chemotherapy on Monday,” Verma. said.

I did not respond as I gathered my thoughts.
 
“You can begin Tuesday if you’d like.” he added. I told him Monday would be fine.

Monday would not be fine. The day after never would be mighty fucking fine, thank you very much. Thoughts about this new reality began pummeling an already fragile psyche.

We discussed time and place and I managed to ask one question before I got off the phone. What's my survival rate?
  

“It’s 15 percent if you remain cancer free after five years,” he said.

Oh. That's not good. Not good at all.