After the First Cancer Treatment

No, I don’t plan to write a play-by-play message after every treatment, but the first one is “special.”  For the first treatment and also this one coming up Tuesday I needed to spend forty-eight hours in the hospital, attached to an IV pole.  What is there to write about?  Mostly the surprise that I had no adverse reactions to the stuff they were putting in my veins.  Miryam stayed with me, which really helped in many ways.  I also didn’t have any major reactions since the treatment other than weakness and occasional nausea.

My only problem is “looking forward” to six months of this.  It’s kind of breathtaking to know that there’s nothing I can do but what the doctors tell me to do.  I’m not really complaining about the twelve treatments, ’cause I know that many people have it much worse than I do.  My treatments are preventative, since they really don’t yet have a way to find out if there are any sneaky cancer cells running around my body waiting to plant themselves somewhere.  I hear that a test is “in the works” that can find out if you have even one cancer cell in your body.  That’s in the future.  For now they have to put you through the treatments just in case.

The thing that still haunts me is that it was the final test for anemia that found the cancer.  That was the colonoscopy. Now, I don’t look forward to having to “prepare” by drinking three liters of soap in order to clear out my colon the day before the colonoscopy, but like everyone who knows someone who has/had colon cancer, I think everyone should have a colonoscopy.  I had one ten years ago.  I was supposed to have another one five years later because they found a polyp.  I didn’t.  Would the cancer have been prevented if I did what the doctors said back then?  Maybe, maybe not.  But you better believe I will have one whenever they say to in the future.  And — here it comes — YOU SHOULD TOO.

That’s my public service announcement.  And the end of this post.

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Posted in: Life