Snow Day
I received an email from Judy Honig, the big wig of the Columbia School of Nursing, stating that there’s a snow day today. It’s a good thing I didn’t go to classes, then.
If you had any idea how many times I checked my email that year I was in New York, first thing in the morning, hoping to see the words “Snow Day.”
Instead of getting a free day off, I have to go begin radiation therapy today. They flood you with mega doses of radiation—the theory is that it’s so bad, it’s SUCH an assault on the body, that the body KNOWS it’s been hurt, and the DNA can repair itself. The idea, I get. They tell me LOW-DOSE radiation (such as from a nuclear explosion) is much more harmful, because the DNA don’t know that there’s been an assault, and they become the types of DNA that produce cancer cells. Metaplasia. Hyperplasia. Neoplasia. Yeah, I know.
I will be receiving enough radiation to probably power Europe for a few weeks. Yet no one has told me how many Grays or Rads I’ll be getting. I guess it’s not something you tell a crying 42 year old, panic-stricken woman.
I am fine, I get into a gown, I wait my turn. They bring me into the control area, where they look at a picture they took of me, to ID me, and ask me to state my name and date of birth. They then lead me into the room with the machine, I assume around 14 feet of lead in the walls, and the second I see the machine, my hand goes up to my mouth, and my eyes fill with tears. Fear clenches my throat closed like a fist.
Today, I’m trying to be Samuel Jackson. I’m the one with the wallet that says “Bad Motherfucker” on it. I’m trying to be Fonzi—real cool. But I know it’s a lie.
I try to be on a white sand beach, in a bikini, but then my mind says “you’ll never get to wear a bikini again! You can’t get sun on this boob ever again!” and “they’re going to leave you a small, dense, microwaved veal cutlet for a breast, you won’t ever WANT to wear a bikini again.” I wonder if I will ever surf again. I try to be on my 9 footer, 3 stringer with a single fin. I try to hear Dave, my surf-bro, going “PADDLE YOU IDIOT! Stand up! NOWNOWNOW!”
I try to go to the Swiss Alps in my mind, and think about the month I spent in Switzerland with George when we got married…Happy moments, but I’m in a machine, and my shoulder hurts because I can’t move, and my arms are over my head.
I can’t move, but tears are rolling down my eyes, and they roll into my ears and it tickles. I try not to sob. I hate that fucking machine and try to break it with my mind. “Fuck you, machine” I think.
Forgive my language. I’m more scared now than I have ever been in my entire life. More scared than when I knew my mother was dying. More scared than when they told me I had cancer. More scared than when they put me under before surgery. More scared than I was the first time I flew after September 11th. More than when I stepped off the plane in Italy to study for the year, more than when I got into a New York City cab by myself, to begin a miserable year away from the man I love, the dog I adore, and the city that is part of me.
I have tried to meditate my fear away, like when I’m in an MRI machine, and need to lay perfectly still, but I have to pee, or have a fierce itch and want to scratch it badly, or getting your teeth drilled at the dentist…it works for those things. Here, it doesn’t work. I try to picture being a CRNA, graduating from Columbia and getting that nursing school pin, and a Master’s degree…I try to be back in Tuscany, sipping wine on a terrace overlooking the rolling hills, or a piazza in Florence…it’s never possible for me for some reason. I’m always just in that dark, scary room, in that effing machine, with my arms over my head.
We spent the weekend ignoring it. I guess we needed to just be little kids or something, because we were like a couple of 5 year olds. I dumped my box of legos on the coffee table, and we built things, and laughed. I turned on the playstation and played Sims ALL DAY yesterday. Seriously. We walked to breakfast at Doyle’s, walked back, and I plonked down in front of the tv and developed Wyatt Jensen’s virtual life (he’s my Sim Character, you’d love him) until I went to bed around 1:00 am.
Wyatt got a better job, built an addition to his house, bought better furniture, made a few new friends, and even managed to get married (though, I have to admit, that was an accident…I wanted to see what happened if he’d propose to his girlfriend, but she said yes, and then I was stuck—LOL)
Wyatt had a great weekend, and so did we—George continued his Lego mania while I was a virtual person. I went to an alien crash site, I visited a ghost town, and I didn’t think about cancer or radiation at all.
Today, however, the weekend is over. Like the chemo, it’s a new assault. They say “I don’t think it’s going to be as bad as you think it is.” In some ways they’re right, but in some ways, they’re not—somehow it’s worse, too.
They tell me it will be like a sunburn (well, I don’t like THOSE, EITHER!) They tell me it could be mild, like peeling, or it could get bad, like blistering and weeping. My mother’s skin never recovered from the radiation she got. I know, she got 27 years added to her life, but I can still picture the color they left her—grey, like boiled meat. They tell me that was a long time ago, and things are better, which I don’t doubt. They tell me it probably won’t be permanent (Probably, but the consent papers I signed mention that it may not go away…so, whom do you belive, the spoken word, or the written consent form?) They tell me I can’t do this and I can’t do that…Six weeks of this shit.
Holy cats.
Here we go.
