Radiation Day 8 of 20 – 40% Complete

Another treatment is in the rearview! Again, it was a fairly straight forward treatment and radiation side effects still seem to be minimal at this point. All good news and good things!

When I arrived at treatment, they called me back to get changed and there was another lady who must have finished up her treatment and was getting changed to leave. She was on the phone with someone and was clearly not in a good mood. It was hard not to overhear here conversation since she was talking loudly and had her phone on speaker. Her phone exchange gave me a good laugh though. I am in no way making fun of this lady – I 100% sympathize with her. While I might not have said the same things she did, I definitely knew exactly how she felt. The moment I first started listening was when I heard:

“I’m in a cussin’ mood. I ain’t in no mood for nobody’s shit.”

After that, I couldn’t help but listen. She had been at the hospital since 8 AM when she arrived for chemo. It sounded like her chemo must have taken a long time today for unknown reasons, but she didn’t finish up her chemo until 2 PM. Then she had to come down to radiation to wait to be seen. Keep in mind, it is 4 PM when I am sitting there so she is going on 8 hours at the hospital. It also sounded like she didn’t have a ride home now and she was calling around to have someone take her home. She must have received a bunch of additional things from the doctors which meant she had more bags to take with her. When I went to chemo I would take a cooler with all of my ice packs, my scalp cooling bag, my backpack, a duffle bag with my blanket and other stuff and then my lunch bag! That’s 5 bags! I can understand how, if she was all alone, she now has to carry all this additional crap with her. Even if she was glad she had her stuff with her, it all still feels like crap when you are tired and just done with the day.

“I gotta carry all these damn bags. I want a goddamn cigarette. I told ’em I’m tired and I don’t give a fuck.”

I’m going to guess that when you are being treated for cancer, probably any type of cancer, smoking cigarettes is strongly discouraged. It sounded like her last radiation treatment was going to be tomorrow (congrats for her!). I can’t believe she has to do chemo and radiation at the same time. That is just horrendous. But I definitely relate to the “I’m tired and I don’t give a fuck” feeling! I think I’d say I wanted cake or a cookie or ice cream instead of a cigarette.

“I’m liable to cuss everyone out and I don’t give a shit. I need a peanut butter and jelly.”

That was almost the last thing she said to the lady she was talking to on the phone! And sometimes you really do just need a simple peanut butter and jelly sandwich! Especially the peanut butter. I could also insert ice cream into that sentence as well. Her exchange was definitely humorous to me, but I am not laughing at her misfortune. I’m laughing because I know exactly what she means and exactly how she feels. I know exactly how done I felt (and feel) and I think I got off lucky with how well I tolerated the chemo. I couldn’t even imagine how much more done I would feel if it had been even harder, I had gotten sicker or I had to do concurrent chemo and radiation.

I frequently feel like I just want all of this to be over with. I wish that it wasn’t happening at all and that it had never happened! Yes, I know that’s not worth spending too much time thinking about, but it can’t help but pop in there. I was thinking today about how a lot of people talk about cancer as a battle. A lot of people call themselves warriors. Or if someone passes away, they say that they lost their battle with cancer. I know a lot of people don’t like that language either. But as I thought about it, if you wanted to maintain the war analogy, I really believe cancer feels like an ambush.

That’s exactly what it does. It lies in wait in your body and grows without you knowing and then one day that jerk-o just pops out and is like, “GOTCHA!” You weren’t prepared. You hadn’t lost that extra weight. You hadn’t started your new exercise plan. You hadn’t finished your remodel of your house. You hadn’t birthed your baby. You hadn’t even turned 30 yet. Some people think they saw it coming, but most people don’t. And it knocks you off your feet and all you can do is fight like hell to come out the other side. You didn’t have any time to strategize. You didn’t have time to ask yourself if you wanted to fight that fight – it was thrust upon you when you were unaware. A battle feels more planned or anticipated. No one anticipates having cancer.

Even though I don’t want her to be there that late, I kind of hope I can run into that lady tomorrow so I can congratulate her on finishing her radiation.