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around the clock.
Dr. Nichols offered to let me do the chemo as an outpatient in Austin. "You can do it at home and we'll
consult," he said. But I insisted on commuting to Indianapolis so that I could be constantly monitored.
"If I get sicker, I want you to be able to see it," I told him. "And if I get better, I want you to see that, too."
Chemo didn't look like anything. It was hard to believe that a substance so deadly could appear so
innocuous. The drugs came in three clear plastic 50cc bags, labeled with my name, the date, the dose, and
the volume of fluid. The silvery clear liquids floated harmlessly in their plastic containers, without any
precipitate. They could just as easily have been bags of sugar water. The giveaway was the pair of heavy
latex gloves the nurse used to handle the bags, and the stamp that said "Hazardous Materials." The nurse
would insert tubing into a bag, and infuse it through another tube into my catheter, and thus into my
bloodstream. One bag took an hour, another took 90 minutes, and the last one took 30.
But those liquids were so destructive they could literally evaporate all of the blood in my body. I felt like
my veins were being scoured out. The medical explanation for the sensation I experienced was myelo-
suppression, the most frequent and severe side effect of chemotherapy, which is the inhibition of red blood
cell production and maturation. Chemo weakens your blood. During the third cycle, my hematocrit the
percentage of total blood volume flowing through my body fell to less than 25, and the normal count is
46. Ironically, I was given a red blood cell booster called Epogen (EPO). In any other situation, taking EPO
would get me in trouble with the International Cycling Union and the International Olympic Committee,
because it's considered performance-enhancing. But in my case, the EPO was hardly that. It was the only
thing that kept me alive.
Chemo doesn't just kill cancer it kills healthy cells, too. It attacked my bone marrow, my muscle, my
teeth, and the linings of my throat and my stomach, and left me open to all kinds of infections. My gums
bled. I got sores in my mouth. And of course I lost my appetite, which was a potentially serious problem.
Without enough protein, I wouldn't be able to rebuild tissue after chemo had eaten through my skin, my
hair, and my fingernails.
Mornings were hardest. I would finish a treatment shortly before dinner. I'd try to eat something, and then
I'd lie in bed, watching television or visiting with my friends. The drugs would penetrate into my system
through the night, and I would wake up the next day in a thick cloud of nausea. There was only one thing I
could tolerate: apple fritters from the hospital cafeteria. It was strange, but the crispy dough, the icy sugar,
and the jam-like apple filling were soothing on my tongue and stomach.
Every morning Jim Ochowicz would show up with a box full of them. He'd sit at the foot of the bed, and
we'd eat them together. Och brought me those fritters every single day, long past the point when I was
capable of actually eating them.
Chemo was lonely. My mother finally went home to Plano after the brain surgery; she had exhausted her
vacation time and couldn't afford to take an unpaid leave. She hated to go; she thought that just by being
there she could make a difference.
When I was in high school she used to believe that if she kept watch over me, nothing bad could happen to
me. When a norther would hit Plano and the streets iced over, my buddies and I used to go to the Plano
East parking lot, tie a snow disc to the back of a car, and tow each other around. My mother would drive up
and watch us from her car. "I feel like if I'm here I can keep you from getting hurt," she said. She felt the
same way about chemo, but she didn't have a choice.
Och took her place, my surrogate parent and my most constant bedside companion. He made the long drive
over from Wisconsin and sat with me for every cycle, day in and day out. Och understood the slow,
corrosive effects of the chemo on a patient's spirit, because he had lost his father to cancer. He knew how
demoralizing the treatment was, and how tedious, and he tirelessly sought ways to divert me. He taught me
how to play Hearts, and he sat next to my bed, dealing the cards for hours on end, with Bill and Lisa
making up a foursome. He read the newspaper and the mail to me when I was too sick to read it myself.
He took me for walks around the hospital, wheeling my IV pole, while we talked about everything from
cycling to Internet stocks. One afternoon, we talked about death. We sat in the sun on a bench outside the
medical center. "Och, I don't feel ready to go, I think I'm supposed to live," I said. "I'm not afraid to die if I
have to. But I'm still not convinced I can't beat this thing."
But chemo felt like a kind of living death. I would lie in bed half-asleep, and lose track of time, including
whether it was day or night and I didn't like that. It was disorienting and made me feel as if things were [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]