Six Letter Word [Kaylor]

May 2017

May fifth. Cinco de Mayo. Not even a big holiday outside of American college students who want an excuse to binge on tequila and US Mexican restaurants that enjoy the sales boost that comes with that. But also possibly one of the biggest days of my life. I didn't know for sure if it was going to be an occasion to celebrate, but I hoped it was. My last scheduled radiation treatment and last at-home chemo infusion. I didn't want to let myself get my hopes up too much. Though my scans before this round had been great, and shown real progress, there had still been quite a few red spots. Under both arms, by my spine and in my groin. It seemed unlikely that those would all have vanished after only five weeks of treatment, when it had been over five months since I started chemo and radiation. But the next steps weren't set in stone. There might be surgery to remove the ones that were left. Maybe just radiation, or just chemo. The fact that radiation effects carry on weeks after the last actual treatment meant that we could just do nothing, as scary as that prospect was. It was entirely possible that after my PET scan they would just wait a month and do another. As much as I never wanted to do another infusion for the rest of my life, it was absolutely terrifying to think about stopping them while even a single cancer cell remained.

The treatments themselves were uneventful. Even Karlie's port access had become fairly routine. I no longer had to strip entirely, and we'd found a good rhythm for it. In fact, she was able to have me sit up for the last few, placing the needle with a practiced hand. I joked that if modelling and computer science didn't work out for her, nursing would be an option. There were no celebratory cupcakes at my last radiation treatment, a clear indication no one thought this was really the end. That was okay. At least I knew what to expect now. My team had been right. As inconvenient and uncomfortable as three infusions a week of chemo were, it really was more gentle on my system. My white counts had stayed higher this time around compared to any other round of chemo, and I'd lost less weight than I expected, given that I now got the pleasure of puking three times a week instead of just one. Because of the new infusion schedule, I needed to get the white cell booster on Sunday or Monday instead of the usual Wednesday. It had to be at least 48 hours after my last infusion for maximum effectiveness. If I was going to have to endure the pain, I definitely wanted it to work as well as possible. Which left us with two options. They didn't do outpatient procedures like that on Sundays, so I could come in and get it Monday, then return Friday for my PET scan, or, I could let Karlie do it Sunday and get a one day head start on getting it over with and feeling better. I honestly wasn't sure Karlie would even agree to it. It isn't administered through my port, so she would have to actually give me a shot, and a slightly different type as well. Plus there was the fact that it caused pain after the fact. She hated knowing the chemo she gave me made me sick, never mind the excruciating pain of that one.

Still, she gamely agreed to practice injecting a little saline into my stomach, a couple inches from my belly button. It was harder for her than the port, I could tell. It actually took a lot less prep than a port access. Just a couple swabs with an alcohol wipe, fill and check the syringe, inject contents and discard. And with saline, the only pain came from the initial stick with the needle. Easy. Who would have thought I'd ever say that? But it was. She was still nervous though, so Deshaun suggested she try it on herself, or let me do the same for her. I couldn't demonstrate that port access didn't hurt because she didn't have one, but I could just as easily try it out on her as she could on me. I could tell that made her nervous too. I couldn't blame her. Nursing is definitely not a future career option for me. Not one I ever considered even before music became my future. But she figured it was only fair and gamely let me pull on a set of gloves and give her shiny abs a swab. Let's just say I should stick to my day job. Karlie was MUCH better at it than me. But my complete ineptitude did prove the point. Even as much as I sucked at it, it wasn't bad. Not bad enough she couldn't handle doing it to me. It made her feel better, knowing that it really wasn't that bad. The white cell booster comes in a pre-measured shot, so there wasn't even any measuring to do. Just swab, un-cap, and stick. We left my last radiation treatment with two of the pre-filled syringes, just in case one was defective or something.