Who's Up for Another Round?

My friend MJS told me last week that she is ready for a chemo blog. And if MJS wants a blog about her chemo, who am I to say no? Truth is, MJS has always provided some pretty kick-ass blog fodder. Plus, she’s on chemo.

Yes, I know. MJS had a baby last year and just got married a little over a month ago. And now cancer? Well, she’s never been one to live life softly. She lives it large, and loud, to the fullest, balls to the wall. She’s all in. Full throttle. Take no prisoners.

Ok, maybe that’s an exaggeration. She really prefers a simple home cooked meal and a Real Housewives marathon on television, but somehow, life hasn’t gotten that message yet. So instead of getting married and having a baby and living happily ever after, she got Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Sucks, doesn’t it?

Everything happened pretty quickly too. One day she was having a wedding reception, and literally the next she was feeling a swollen lymph node and thinking, what the fuck? I should get that looked at. Unlike her usual “wait and see if it goes away” approach to her health, she  immediately got in with a physician’s assistant, who decided to do a "just in case" chest x-ray, who called the next day with some seriously unexpected news and an appointment with an oncologist. Before the week was over, she was in surgery getting that lymph node sliced out and getting even more serious and unexpected news.

The good news is that Hodgkin’s is highly treatable. The bad news is that it’s still…cancer. She has been scheduled for four rounds of chemo, followed by a few weeks of daily radiation. Hopefully after that she can go back to the balls to the wall part.

Chemo doesn’t happen  anymore like it did in Terms of Endearment, with Shirley MacLaine lying in a hospital bed in ICU with everybody tearing up around her. Now it’s a little more like giving blood, only they are putting stuff in you instead of draining it out. MJS goes to the cancer center for a full day, makes a stop at the lab, maybe pops in at the doctor’s office, then settles herself in her easy chair, partitioned by curtains from the other easy chairs, and waits for bag after bag of IV medication and fluid to fill her angry little arm.  Then she goes home and waits to see what’s going to happen.

That’s the fun part of chemo; anything could happen. Her tears and pee could be red. She could have chest pain or back pain or headaches. Her jaw could seize every time she opens for a bite of food, if the nausea doesn’t get to her first. She might have a superhuman round of energy and adrenalin or a foggy addle-mindedness known in the cancer biz as “chemo brain.” And she can flush the dream of a productive and invigorating bowel movement down the toilet. No amount of high fiber twig and berries cereal washed down with a shot of Colace is going to make those bowels move.

After MJS’s first round of chemo, her momma came to stay with her to help take care of the baby and cook and pick up the tumbleweeds of dog fur that blow around the hardwood floors. MJS decided one morning that a nice, hot shower sounded like the very thing. She got in the stall and let it get all warm and steamy, just enjoying the hot water raining down on her. Everything was great until one of her lungs decided to stop working. She crawled her way out of the shower, naked and wet, barely able to breathe, with what she thought was a collapsed lung. With whatever strength and breath she had left, she called to her mother, who came into the bedroom and found MJS dripping and freezing on the floor. Her mother cradled her in her arms, begging her to breathe while calling the doctor’s office. The oncologist shared the one bit of good news, that her bone marrow was cancer free, before telling her not to take any more long hot showers.

I went to visit MJS after her second round. Physically, she was doing much better. I don’t know if it was because her body had adjusted to the initial shock of poison or what, but the nausea and pain seemed a bit less. She spent the visit wrapping herself in an electric blanket like a burrito and lying on the couch, followed by running her hands through her hair to see how much she could gather in a handful, and then repeating the process. Frequently and obsessively. MJS used to have an OCD thing about the dog fur, but now she could take that energy and focus it instead on her own rapidly thinning hair.

Because, oh yeah, losing your hair is another fun part of chemo. The good news is that she won’t need a bikini wax soon. Also gone are razor bumps in the armpits and her favorite chin hair. Luckily, she looks fabulous in hats. She even looks fabulous with thinning hair. MJS can totally rock the cancer look, let me tell you. It could be a whole retro modeling thing, like when Kate Moss was big: Models with cancer; we still look better in clothes than you do.

“You won’t believe this,” MJS told me while looking through the American Cancer Society catalog, “But they sell bangs and sideburns to wear under your hat. So it looks like you still have hair instead of just a hat on a bald head.”

“Get the fuck out? They sell bangs? Do they attach to the hat?” I asked her.

“No, I think they stick on to your head.”

“Will you wear just a bang for me, and nothing else?” I asked her.

She burped at me. “Not gonna happen.”

“Do they have a ring of hair like the monk from Robin Hood? The one with the big bald spot, what’s his name, Friar Tuck?”

“I’m not looking for that.”

“What about pubic wigs? Do they have any of those? Just to change up your look a little? You know, spice things up a bit? My dad said those were called merkins. How did he know that anyway?”

She got up. “I’m going to try to poo again.”

“Not gonna happen,” I said back to her.

Tomorrow is round three of chemo, and the day after, Thanksgiving. She doesn’t have two white blood cells to her name. She will be toxic; her pee and sweat and tears and drool all have a level of poison that other humans shouldn’t touch. So while we are all stuffing our faces, she will be wrapped up in her hair-covered electric throw, hopefully watching “The Real Housewives” and making the occasional poo. And the whole time, she’ll still look fabulous, because she is.