Monster Week

Monster Week

As the stylist snipped over $600 worth of highlights from my hair, I watched it fall into piles. A high school girl strategically stepped around her, only to sweep it into her dustpan and throw it away. The stylist excitedly combed some wax through my hair, and I emerged from the salon looking like Kate Plus Eight. My ego was left on the salon floor in the strands of my golden blonde hair. I sent pictures to my husband, and I hated them all.

Was I fighting cancer or calling the manager?

This is the hand I’m dealt and the price I pay; vanity for life.

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I knew I would hate hate hate the port-a-cath. Even after birthing two children, I never overcame my squeamishness around blood draws and veins. And somehow, I was supposed to live life with a port under my collarbone.

Childbirth is generally seen as a happy time in a hospital setting. You’ve nestled your egg for 9 long months, and after pushing or cutting (or both), you get this prize for your efforts. A pearl from your own making to treasure forever. So with only two births to my surgical history, this was a nightmare. Who the fuck would get surgery for something they didn’t want in the first place? They weren’t fixing or removing an issue. They were adding something I never wanted in the first place.

But still, Monday morning, I lay in the hospital bed. I cried to my surgeon (who I love) and to the nurses when suddenly, a familiar face walked in. The anesthesiologist from both of my childbirths stood at the edge of my bed.

“Kathlyn! Hey! What are we doing today, girl? How out do you wanna be for this?”

He was an actual angel. I could’ve kissed his cheek as I said, “Out cold, please!”

All I remember was crying as I was wheeled into the operating room. He had fulfilled my wishes. 

I woke up in the recovery room just over two hours later to a completed procedure.

They had left the needle in my port-a-cath for chemo the next day. However, right after surgery, the cancer center called and said that my insurance was pending covering the last part of my treatment. So, with chemo postponed, the needle had to come out.

We dropped off the kids at Gable’s parent’s and rushed ourselves over to the cancer center. I had hardly remembered that I was still hopped up on anesthesia as I waltzed into the closed building with fresh wounds on my chest. Thankfully, removing the needle only took 5 minutes, but the whole conundrum left me spinning. My chest was so raw and tender by the end of the day.

Just in time for chemo, two days later. 

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I feel like I could write a book about chemo alone, and maybe I should. Upon my initial diagnosis, I knew it would be bad. I just hadn’t understood how bad. And why?

Chemo itself was a breeze. With the exception of replacing a needle in my post-surgery port-a-cath, I was in a recliner for 8 hours. I played video games for the first time in almost a year! I watched the first two episodes of House of Dragon. I conversed with the other women who sat next to me for their quick infusions. Gable had lovingly packed a cooler full of seltzers, a deli-made sandwich, and chocolates for me to snack on. 

It was annoying, but was it awful? No. Not yet.

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The following morning, Gable woke me late. I entered the day sluggish and with static in my head. My hands were shaking, and pain radiated through my legs. Upon taking one sip of my morning coffee, I ran to the bathroom. My stomach swirled upside down, and I barely reached the toilet.

Cool. Not even 24 hours, and I was basically shitting my pants.

Not only was I riding out a physical hell storm, but I had to go back to the cancer center for a post-chemo shot. The injection was meant to “activate” my bone marrow and aid my white blood cells. Just a shot? Fine.

“You may experience some bone pain after the shot just so you know,” my nurse sweetly said as she pulled the needle out of the container.

“Bone pain? What is that just like general achiness?” I had never heard of bone pain, apart from arthritis and aging aches.

She shrugged, “Kind of. You’ll know it when you feel it.”

Friday morning, I felt it.

Pain like I had never known hollowed into the deepest parts of my body. First, my shin bones. I spent hours dipping into a downward dog position to stretch out the sharp edges of this bone pain. As the day went on, it toured my body.

I was simultaneously fighting the fatigue of chemo and the fogginess of the day. A dark haze shadowed my thinking. People texted me throughout the day to check up on my well-being, and I didn’t know if my responses made any sense. I was clammy and freaked out by my inability to go on as usual. My body was no longer mine but a machine fighting against the fight to smother cancer. 

Time was slowing down; every time I looked at the clock, only five minutes had passed. Sweat glazed my palms, and my heartbeat flew. Every five minutes, I needed two minutes of deep breathing.

Eight seconds out.

Eight seconds hold.

Eight seconds in.

This continued until now.

I breathed myself through the afternoon, into bathing the kids, and slowly to sleep.

It is now morning, and the exhale still guides me.

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At last, I understand now why people say to “fight like hell.” I know the ongoing anguish that follows the word chemo. All my life, I have lived from a sparkling pedestal of health privilege. No broken bones, no surgical procedures, no ongoing conditions for saving the crippling depression of my bloodline. But nothing Lexapro hasn’t dulled into normalcy.

In cancer, every moment is a fight. Every ache, pain, cramp, and whiff of nausea consumes every second of the day. So trying to carry on as if there isn’t full-blown warfare happening internally is impossible. 

After chemotherapy, I realized how ignorant I was of the hell disabled and chronically pained people face daily. Each moment struggles against the one before it to ensure I’m not dying. This is okay. It’s supposed to hurt. The drugs are working. Has it been five minutes or five hours? How many Tylenol can I take now? I already took three prescription-strength Naproxen. Am I going to throw up?

Tylenol doesn’t do shit.

But none of this is normal.

Will I remember what normal was before this is all over?

Fuck, I am so sick of drugs already. 

What they won’t break, the bone pain will.