AS GOOD AS IT FEELS, LIFE’S ABOUT TO CHANGE AGAIN
An oversized brown box arrives on the front porch. Inside is a plastic bag. Inside that, is a small bottle, maybe three inches big. Inside that are 21 Ibrance capsules which will take me through the next month of this leg of my cancer treatment.
The bottle of pills cost $10,000 a month, so I imagine it doesn’t seem indulgent to the specialty pharmacy to send it out overnight in this oversized package. The plastic, resealable bag is thick. I can think of a million reusable ideas for it if it didn’t contain the ominous skull and cross bones and a warning that reads: Dangerous. Toxic. Chemotherapy drugs. Do not handle.
I wonder what my trash men will think of me. And I realize I now live in a toxic world, one where I can no longer recycle or repurpose. One where there’s no turning back.
According to my first pathology report five years ago, my cancer cell was an estrogen-hungry fool, making her easy to decimate. I agreed to an aggressive IV chemotherapy treatment that shrunk my tumors to mere slivers, and the surgery and radiation that followed erradicated them entirely. I endured baldness, bone pain, nausea and weakness that I thought I’d never recover from. For my efforts, my doctors were sure I was cured, free of the pernicious cells.
AND THEN THERE WAS THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY
But it turned out, one survived. My onocologist would later explain that tumors are like jars of pebbles and the first pathology report told of a larger rock in the jar. What was left was a grain-like piece of sand. This cell didn’t eat much estrogen. She was very slow growing. I called her my Crack Whore cell, because it was amazing she existed, let alone thrived in the Country club setting that’s my body. My Muffy and Buffy cells were outraged that she’d gained admittance. They want her banished.
I agreed, of course. And so we sought to oust her with a combination of drugs. One, called Xgeva, fortified my bones, which is where she took residence, relegating her to a cardboard bed existence outside a barred –bone entrance. The other, called Faslodex, filed the edges off the estrogen the Crack Whore feeds off of so she couldn’t grasp them when they floated by her. The third, called Arimidex, leeched the estrogen out of my body, in an effort to starve the Crack Whore completely.
SO WE ROCKED HER WORLD
In the beginning, the new hostile environment worked. The Crack Whore stopped having babies and Muffy and Buffy filled in with their own children.
Then after about six months, the Crack Whore realized she didn’t need as much food, didn’t mind the cardboard bed and started pimping herself out again. Judging by the CT scans I had last month, she hasn’t given birth, but she’s likely pregnant along with her other Crack Whore offspring.
So last month, I started a new approach. Nix the estrogen leeching drug and replace it with the Ibrance, a drug that blocks proteins the cancer cell needs to replicate. A Crack Whore cell tubal ligation of sorts.
THE MARRIAGE DILEMMA
I call it the Ibrance Romance. When I started taking the drug, it seemed so much better than anything else I’d been on. I was in love. Three weeks into it I crossed the matrimonial threshold and suddenly thought to myself “What have I gotten myself into?” Now I wonder if I can endure living with it the rest of my life or if I’ll scratch its eyes out.
While my doctor told me I shouldn’t experience any side effects from the Ibrance, he explained that the drug suppresses my bone marrow – that’s the place where red and white blood cells are made – so I will likely see my blood counts go down. I need to go in for tests to be sure they don’t go too low, in which case I’ll need to take a break from the drug or go off it completely. For that reason, I can only be on the drug for three weeks at a time, with a week off to give my body time to replenish the damaged bone marrow.
It’s a bit like going into Muffy and Buffy’s den and messing with their Netflix streaming. But knowing that Muffy and Buffy are the Country Club set, I kept them preoccupied with activities. I make lots of dates with friends – many who are in the same boat – to run, bike, swim, walk. Keep our endorphins up, the dopamine pumping, the serotonin flowing. For Muffy and Buffy, it’s a cocktail party and they didn’t miss NetFlix.
PARTY’S OVER
Then came the hangover. Searing pain in my bones that were rebuilding themselves, from a restless aching in my toes up through my long, leg bones to a burning in my rib cage and pounding in my head like I’d been hit with a baseball bat. I took a pain reliever, which didn’t much help.
I decided to respond to pain with pain, longer runs that inflame my hip flexors, cancelling out the bone pain, which works until I have to go to sleep. And then, even that stops working.
The pain is so great, I call my doctor for an answer, something stronger to relieve the pain. And while I wait for him to return my call, I begin to cry. I cry because it hurts. I cry because I know I now live in a toxic world where I can’t recycle or repurpose and there’s no going back. I cry because my body has to work so hard to heal itself and there’s nothing I can do to change that. I cry because I know this is the tip of the iceberg, that I’m in the rabbit hole and down is the only way I can go.
I cry until I hear a knock at the door. I wipe my eyes, as I hear giggling and clinking glasses on the other side. It’s Muffy and Buffy.
“Cocktails anyone?” I hear them yell on the other side.
