You might think the chemotherapy ward would make the cancer center’s waiting room look jolly. In fact, little of the latter’s trepidation is apparent in the former.
Probably because most of the people being infused through plastic tubes attached to hanging plastic bags of toxic chemicals are the lucky ones. If the chemo isn’t working to kill their cancers they don’t stay for long. Their docs can spot success or failure pretty quick. So smiles are more common than not. Even if the stuff does play hell with the body.
First-timers like Mrs. Charm are placed near the front where the nurses and techs hover about solicitously. Sometime after her first hour, we found out why. Mrs. C. got chills so bad her teeth were chattering. The nurses brought blankets and eased the flow back a notch or two. When the chills subsided without any serious effects, they moved it back up. There were no more chills.
The room wasn’t crowded the day we were there. Most of the patients were middle-aged, as you would expect, about evenly divided between men and women. But there was one man in his eighties and two women in their twenties. Primary care givers got chairs to sit beside their patients.
The hairless ones were identifiable by their hats or scarves. Hair loss usually begins after the second cycle, which comes after about four weeks of recovery from the first infusion. The chemo attacks dividing cells and it can’t discriminate between cancer cells and healthy ones. Cells at the roots of hair follicles seem to be particularly vulnerable.
After Mrs. C.’s six hours of infusion, she pronounced herself feeling “better than I have in a long time.” Ninety-six hours later (including another six hours of blood transfusions and a quick shot of white-blood cells) she tires easily and is a little puffy at the ankles. Her sense of taste and smell have turned finicky. Her recurrent fever of the past few weeks, however, has happily disappeared.
So there’s hope at the Rancho. We’ll get the doc’s early verdict on progress next week. If it’s as positive as Mrs. C. feels she’ll be among the lucky ones who get to continue in the chemo ward—hair loss and all.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 