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If you listened to parts 1 and 2 of this podcast series, you heard me discuss finding out I had cancer, then starting chemotherapy, then having surgery to remove the tumors. There were some dark days—very dark days—during that six-month period. But for the most part, I couldn’t have asked for a better outcome as I entered the end of November with six more rounds of chemo to go.
I had a breather between the surgery and the start of the last six rounds of chemo, and the time flew by. I love the phrase, “Don’t live in the wreckage of your future,” but I caught myself counting down the days till chemo started again. I was dreading it.
Here’s the thing about chemo at the hospital: There is no way you walk in there and end up going, “You know what? Today was an awesome day of chemotherapy!” It’s miserable. The process is miserable. The other people are often miserable. They do the best they can to keep you warm and happy, but chemo is chemo.
People ask me what it’s like, so I will get very granular about it. The first thing they usually did with me was access my port, which involves stabbing a small needle into my chest for the day. It’s never pleasant when they puncture that area but it just kind of ended up being like a shot that stays in your chest.
Then they start putting fluids into you. I usually started with a steroid and an anti-nausea medication to try to get out front of the actual chemo.
Then they come in with the chemo. My nurse would always have a full hazmat suit on, with gloves and a plastic mask over her face the entire time. It was such a jarring visual because my nurses would be protected in case they spilled any of the chemo. Meanwhile, the chemo was going INTO me. Think about that for a second. They’re worried about it getting on their skin, and they’re injecting it straight into my chest. It was always a haunting thing to see.
The first six rounds of chemo, the actual chemotherapy part was about 4 hours of constant poison draining into me. This six-round cycle, they reduced it a bit to 2 hours of chemo. I remember being excited because I thought maybe the side effects would be better with such a reduced amount of chemotherapy.
Not so fast. From Day One of this round of chemo, I found the side effects to be unbearable and worse and worse every time. My doctor explained even though the doses were smaller, I was still getting a heavy batch of very strong chemo, and that the effects of chemo are often cumulative. Which means that Round 7 is worse than Round 6, and Round 8 would likely be worse than Round 7.
I found that to be the case, in a big way this time. The chemo caused me to have significant headaches, which flared up especially bad when I was around noise and people. I also started getting bloody noses this time around, though my doctor thought that was partially due to chemo and partially due to the dry air of winter. I felt nauseous for long stretches of time—I never threw up or really felt close to vomiting, but I felt unease in my guts pretty much all the time. And last but not least, the neuropathy has gotten to be pretty brutal. For me, that meant serious tingling in my feet, hands and face when I got near anything cold. That certainly was the case when I would be outside in 20 degree weather. But I also recoiled the other morning when I woke up and grabbed my laptop computer… just that room temperature computer made me feel like I stuck a screwdriver into a light socket.
The cycle for chemo was usually that I went in on a Wednesday, then went home with a pack on that kept pumping chemo into me for another 44 hours or so. Then they’d remove the pump and I would stop taking the steroid that seemed to muffle some of the symptoms. So days 1-3 would be rough but not the roughest—days 4-7 or so usually got worse and worse.
That usually gave me a general cycle of one bad week, then one good week, then start over again. But during Rounds 7-12 over the past few months, I found that it was pretty much 14 rough days, then you do it again. I didn’t find much relief, and that’s where recovery comes into the picture a little bit.
I am an alcoholic and a drug addict. I sought comfort for years with drugs and alcohol. Sometimes it was to sooth physical discomfort, but other times, it was to sooth mental discomfort. So I really started to struggle in December when I couldn’t find any relief. I still hurt from the surgery, and the chemo was getting worse and worse, and I had spent six straight months battling cancer. I wanted relief, even just for a short amount of time.
But the relief came a different way. I doubled down on getting to meetings, and I found relief there. It wasn’t the same kind of instantaneous buzz that wipes out the bad feelings. It was more methodical and slow-building, but it worked.
I also helped to launch a group of sober people who take food into a homeless shelter once a month, and every Thursday at a smaller warming center. I found tremendous relief there, too, because it really takes you outside yourself. These are people who are hurting, sometimes because of substance abuse, and you’re able to bring them some comfort for an evening. I got a lot out of that.
So I kept inching along with my chemo, and I took a blood test in mid-December that would show if the cancer had spread elsewhere. We knew my liver and rectal areas were clear. But my doctors couldn’t say for sure that cancer cells hadn’t spread out anywhere else.
I had gotten a preview that the test results were good. But on Dec. 31, I met with my oncologist for the first time in a month or two. We sat down and went through the plan for the remaining few rounds of chemo, and then I asked him what my status was, officially. And he said, “As far as we can tell, you are cancer free.”
The words hit me pretty hard. It was a weird feeling to know that the most agonizing cancer treatments were up ahead for me… and yet I was cancer free. But he explained that the last few rounds were precautionary treatments, just to make sure we got it, and I understood that. I don’t want to get to the 1-yard line and not punch it in for the touchdown.
So last week I went in for my final round, and two days later, they took the chemo pump out for the last time. I felt horrible, so it was a strange feeling walking out those hospital doors for what I hope is the last time. I felt like celebrating but absolutely did not want to celebrate. But the overall feeling was awesome. I’d made it. I was cancer free.
It’s interesting how I am feeling today, though. This sounds bizarre to say, but life with cancer was quite simple. I had one big goal every day—fight cancer. It gave me a specific sense of purpose and motivation every day, that I was battling this big thing. And I’ll admit, I have always responded well when there was one big fight in front of me. I get all juiced up and ready to rumble, and then I rumble.
What’s tricky is that I now feel a little bit of a hangover, as strange as that sounds. I don’t think that’s uncommon for addicts like me. When I got sober, there was a huge part of me that was so sick and tired of living the way I was living—I was suffering pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization every single day and wanted out so bad.
And yet… once I got sober and paid my bills on time and wasn’t chasing drugs and alcohol all day, there was a part of me that felt like I had a giant void in me. What would I fill it with?
That’s on my mind right now. I think I have enough spirituality in my system that I don’t need to find a new life-threatening battle to give me purpose. But I am keeping an eye on it, and connecting within recovery will be the key.
The fight is over. All is quiet on the western New England front for me. I was at a meeting the other day where someone said that if your ass falls off, you need to pick it up and get to a meeting, and I couldn’t help but laugh at how close I came to actually having to find a second seat for my cancerous ass that fell off.
This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:
I was invited to a fight the other night, and an AA business meeting broke out.
(Credit: AA Grapevine, Feb. 2000, Michael S. from Massachusetts)
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