An American Nightmare: Alone, Sick, Broke, and Unemployed

Reflections of a recovering chemo patient... an excerpt
by Alex Hutchins

“It’s going in now, " I whispered into the Droid.  No response.

“It’s going in now,” I repeated a little louder.  Still no response.

“The poison is going in,” I stated defiantly and loudly enough for all the others in the treatment room to hear, including the wrong nurse to annoy. 

She was middle-aged, not quite as old as me, but still looked every bit of the north side of 60.  She was short and squatty with an unpleasant disposition that looked over wire-rimmed gold glasses in such a way that it bit into your skin like a needle puncture.  Her white hair was pulled back tight on her head and pulled into a ponytail in back that was folded in half twice with a rubber band wrapped around it to keep her hair-knot in place.  She always wore a white dress that fit tightly around her Hershey kiss type shape as if as one time, it was loose-fitting but grew tight as she encased her body with a few extra pounds. 

She walked in my direction like my third grade teacher who wanted to rap my knuckles with a ruler as I quickly spoke into the Droid again,

            “I’ve got to go,” and closed the phone without any hesitation of wanting to check for a response.

I pushed out the recliner, looked at the needle in my left forearm, felt a little nauseous, laid my head back and closed my eyes, but not so tight I could not squint-out the sight of Nurse Ratchet, standing over me, wanting to say something yet discreetly walked away to the other side of the room.  I could feel the heat of my face and head and knew that I was “red” with embarrassment, but also felt a sense of accomplishment with what I had done:  breaking the noise regulations of the chemo treatment room.

There is a zone of sleeping twilight that I sometimes encounter when I am not fully asleep nor fully awake, yet what I see is more intense and vivid that a daydream…

I could see myself lying on the bathroom floor, closed only in my underwear;  my discarded bathrobe lay outside the narrow room in a pile frenzied disrobing; my body was wet and glistening with sweat rolling down my pale white skin; my hair at the back of my neck was dripping wet too as if I had just walked out of a shower without drying; my right arm was reaching out over my head toward the porcelain bathtub; my breathing appeared quick and deliberate and my hairy chest pushed outward then withdrew; my entire body tensed and tightened in all of its muscles and tendons and arched upward from its reclined position as if it were a marionette being pulled up quickly by strings; my head hung down like a bloodhound sniffing the ground for a clue; my mouth opened as wide as it could, the fist that I could see made a fist; a loud guttural sound, sustaining and painful was being pushed out of my mouth in  like the vomit that never came, and my body after 12-15 seconds or so collapsed on the cool tile floor mimicking the appearance of my bathrobe.  I knew if I kept watching myself that my performance would last 20-30 minutes before the sensation passed.

I opened my eyes and tried to re-focus my thoughts and instantly re-lived the last few minutes of my employment and the unemotional words that informed me,

“…you are being terminated and we have called in the local police department to escort you to your car.” 

All I could think of now was the fact that everyone knew what was happening to me and the only thoughts that entered my mind was for me to leave as quickly as possible so that none of my co-workers would be embarrassed.  I also knew that is was standard operating procedure (and human nature), no matter what claims the company made at treating people with respect that “everything” would be blamed on me:  I had seen this before in the year that I worked there.

I wondered if I would be able to receive unemployment and if I would have enough money to pay for COBRA insurance.  I could not believe that all of this going on in my head and my blood pressure was still 110/62.  I reminded myself that I had truly been blessed with a strong, healthy body, despite my Lymphoma cancer and heart disease.

With my last treatment two days from now and my wife’s inability to drive up to be with me over the weekend, I decided I would drive the 100 miles home, hoping that the nausea and vomiting would not “kick-in” until after I arrived home.  I did not want to spend the weekend after treatment alone as that was always when the sickness arrived unlike an unexpected house-guest.

All I am thinking right now, is that tomorrow is my long day of 6 hours or more and right now, I just need to take a sleeping pill and get a good night’s rest, providing that I have enough pills to see me through the weekend in the hopes of sleeping through the nausea and vomiting.

Everything happens for a reason, I keep telling myself until my needle is removed and I am released from treatment for the day.  Since my day ended early, I decided to drop by the unemployment office (now probably known by another name) and apply for my benefit, hoping that it will be easy to find since I still do not, after a year of living here, know where everything is located.

 Who am I kidding; I thought to myself, I am scared silly.  While this is my last of 6-3 day treatment, I am alone, sick, broke, and unemployed.  I have cancer, stressed caused heart damage, just shy of full retirement and humiliated again from losing my job.
         
 So, what’s next for me?  For us?  All I could think about no matter how hard I tried to clear my mind, was in two more days, I will be sick as a dog again and the thought of that memory made be break out in a cold sweat as I drove back to my condo and cat in silence, not even aware of the traffic around me…

I HAD TO HAVE A DRIVER

My Chemo was intense, four cocktails at one time and then a bag with a tube tied to the port in my chest which I would wear for two days.  I am fighting colorectal cancer which has mestastisized to my liver and lungs.  I'm still on Chemo, four pills a day and an infusion of Avastin every three weeks.  It was the frequency of the diarrhea that got to me.  Going to the potty every 45 minutes with most of the trips being false alarms.  I wore Depends, large diapers for older people, worked for me because as I was in treatment I had times when there was no time to get to a toilet.  I have to say it was the worst experience of my life and this is coming from a person who had a triple bypass operation in 2006. But there was no question that I couldn't drive myself back from the infusion room.  Even though it was a 20 minute drive, my wife was with me always.

Like Alex, it boggles the mind that we both had healthy bodies all our lives until the body gave out to heart problems and cancer.  Doctors tell me "well you certainly are in good health considering" . . . considering what?  I think.  That I could drop dead at any time?

I took a Lorazepam before my Chemo treatments; a pill for nausea right afterwards, so I didn't experience vomiting like most Chemo patients.  But there was nothing I could do physically or mentally to control the diarrhea.  One trick I did learn is that Tylenol 4 with Codeine, more Codeine than aspirin, acts as a binder for the body's waste.  It will kill the pain in joints and muscles but also gives most people a hard stool.  I have been accused of taking the Codeine to stop the diarrhea.  This fear of becoming dehydrated due to the constant diarrhea is life threatening.  When I did what the doctors told me I ended up in the Emergency Room with Kidney failure.  So today I am in more control of my body and know the symptoms immediately.  I'm on auto pilot and no doctor can tell me what will work or what won't.  And does it really matter?  Like my wife says when she gets upset with me "You already have one foot in the grave". 
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Vic, my wife says:  "You are worth more to me alive than dead," meaning I do not have much life insurance; but that was my Dad's influence because he always believed most families were insurance poor...  but, that is an article for another day.