The Day After
Author's Note: All times approximate based on my drug-induced recollections. This is not A Million Little Pieces. I don't just make stuff up. I do, however, employ very obvious pseudonyms (try finding My Fantabulous Surgeon in the white pages) and the occasional hyperbole because THAT'S HOW I TALK.
OK, end of James Frey-induced rant.
12:30AM: Go to bed after having taken appropriate medications and drinking equivalent of eight glasses of water. (Chemo acts on its targets very quickly, but you don't really want it hanging around after that, so you've got to flush the stuff out of your system as soon as possible. Warning—do not read rest of parenthetical if easily grossed out: Back in 2001, I was on a very potent, very toxic chemo drug called Adriamycin that is bright orangey-red in color. Aside from killing cancer cells and making your hair fall out, guess what it does? Causes you to pee in TECHNICOLOR ORANGE. The down side was that it was really freaky to pee in technicolor. The up side was that it was easy to tell when the stuff was out of my system. By then I'd drunk so much water that I was peeing absolutely clear. OK, end of gross-out.)
Still feeling good despite midly bad taste in mouth and tiniest of headaches. Had a good appetite for dinner and a yummy dessert. (If it's Girl Scout cookie-time near you, I highly recommend a couple of crushed frozen Thin Mints atop Ben & Jerry's Organic Vanilla ice cream. To quote my friend Dan (hi, Dan!): de-lish!)
4:00AM: Wake up. Pee. (That was eight glasses of water, remember?) Try to fall back asleep. Fail.
(One of my appropriate medications is a steroid that prevents allergic reactions and swelling but also has several undesirable side effects—sleeplessness, to name one. Plus I had taken a nearly five-hour-long Benadryl-induced nap during treatment. The Benadryl also prevents allergic reactions. And, as you may remember from the egg-retrieval day, I am highly drug-sensitive. So glad I brought all that reading material along with me yesterday.)
4:35AM: Give up on sleep. Move to couch. (We live in a studio, so this basically means walking around the bed to the designated "living room area." Work on laptop in the dark. Try not to wake Zach (a mere seven paces away).
6:00AM: Try to decide whether I'm nauseated or not. (I am sparing you a pedantic discussion of the difference between nauseous and nauseated. No need to thank me.) Doesn't seem like a tough call, but lack of sleep always makes me feel a little sick to my stomach when I first wake up, and then it passes within about an hour. Am due to take anti-nausea drug #1 sometime this morning (and again tomorrow morning), so I decide to take it now. Anti-nausea drug #2 remains on deck. Pee again.
6:10AM: Go back to bed. Wish I could curl up on one side or the other, but no dice. Still sore from surgery on the left and from new titanium accoutrement on the right (even without all the IV tubing). Lie on back, thinking of Gregor Samsa. Fall asleep.
7:30AM: Wide awake. Pee again, then move back to couch. Still can't tell if I'm nauseated. This really shouldn't be that hard. Try drinking some water and eating a few Ritz crackers. Feed the cats before they start meowing incessantly. (Zach still blissfully asleep.)
8:00AM: Cell phone vibrates back on my side of bed. A doctor, perhaps? Someone from the cancer center calling to make sure I'm OK? No. A wrong number.
Zach now awake.
8:30AM: I decide that hunger and nausea probably can't co-exist. I try my luck with a bowl of cereal and a banana. So far, so good.
We start hearing a weird noise emanating from the basement.
Please do NOT let it be the boiler. (There is a blizzard forecast for tonight.)
Zach investigates and confirms that it is the boiler. We give thanks for our 24/7 service contract.
(It's not the first time a major snowstorm inspired the boiler to give out. In fact, the last time it happened like this: We stay up late on a Friday, prepping for our holiday party the next night. Blizzard begins. Zach wakes up in the middle of the night in excruciating abdominal pain. I call 911 for the first time in my life. Ambulance comes. We ride to the hospital in the snow. We cancel party. I come home 14 hours later. Zach stays another three days and eventually has to have surgery a few months later. Blizzard continues. I shovel snow and spread salt. I freeze party food. Boiler dies. I'm so cold and tired I don't notice until the next day. Other boilers all over town die in solidarity. Service calls backed up almost 24 hours. I call a car service and go to Home Depot at 10PM on a Sunday and buy three space heaters—one for each apartment—as back-up. Boiler is fixed Monday morning. Space heaters save the day—um, night—until then.)
We put in a service call. The weird noise gets weirder and louder. Zach shuts off the boiler.
10:00AM: Service guy arrives, checks out boiler, needs a part. Promises to return.
Still not sure if I'm nauseated. Still hungry. Still have a minor headache. Still awake.
10:22AM: Doorbell rings. Service guy returns!
10:30AM: Zach makes me a yummy breakfast smoothie. I take my morning dose of steroids (guaranteed to keep me awake and hungry).
11:00AM: Boiler is fixed! I am back to work on a story due on Wednesday (impressed, aren't you?). I am even planning a fun pre-blizzard interview this afternoon. Hurrah! Now if I can only will myself back to sleep for a nap in between. . . .
1:30PM: No nap, but lots of good interview prep. Zach is making me a sandwich so I can have a picnic lunch in the car en route to the interview.
5:00PM: Back from fun interview, still feeling good. Snow has been falling for about an hour and is beginning to stick. Two close college pals are on their way into town—one from LA, the other from PA—and I'll get to see them tonight. Between the snow and the chemo, it looked likely that we'd have to cancel, but we've managed to salvage our plans. We're bagging dinner at a fancy restaurant downtown and are relocating the festivities to far-from-fancy Brooklyn.
12:30AM: Back from yummy dinner at Thai restaurant with Zach, college pals (hi, Linda and Lisa!), and upstairs neighbor (hi, Bill!), followed by yummy dessert and vociferous political debate at nearby Italian panini restaurant. It's the first normal Saturday night that Zach and I can remember having in two months. Good friends, good food, atmospheric snowfall, an excuse to enjoy our neighborhood—what else could we need?
I'm still feeling good and hope that I have worn myself out enough to overcome the steroids (second dose taken five hours ago) and sleep through the night. If not, there's Benadryl in the house. . . .
OK, end of James Frey-induced rant.
12:30AM: Go to bed after having taken appropriate medications and drinking equivalent of eight glasses of water. (Chemo acts on its targets very quickly, but you don't really want it hanging around after that, so you've got to flush the stuff out of your system as soon as possible. Warning—do not read rest of parenthetical if easily grossed out: Back in 2001, I was on a very potent, very toxic chemo drug called Adriamycin that is bright orangey-red in color. Aside from killing cancer cells and making your hair fall out, guess what it does? Causes you to pee in TECHNICOLOR ORANGE. The down side was that it was really freaky to pee in technicolor. The up side was that it was easy to tell when the stuff was out of my system. By then I'd drunk so much water that I was peeing absolutely clear. OK, end of gross-out.)
Still feeling good despite midly bad taste in mouth and tiniest of headaches. Had a good appetite for dinner and a yummy dessert. (If it's Girl Scout cookie-time near you, I highly recommend a couple of crushed frozen Thin Mints atop Ben & Jerry's Organic Vanilla ice cream. To quote my friend Dan (hi, Dan!): de-lish!)
4:00AM: Wake up. Pee. (That was eight glasses of water, remember?) Try to fall back asleep. Fail.
(One of my appropriate medications is a steroid that prevents allergic reactions and swelling but also has several undesirable side effects—sleeplessness, to name one. Plus I had taken a nearly five-hour-long Benadryl-induced nap during treatment. The Benadryl also prevents allergic reactions. And, as you may remember from the egg-retrieval day, I am highly drug-sensitive. So glad I brought all that reading material along with me yesterday.
4:35AM: Give up on sleep. Move to couch. (We live in a studio, so this basically means walking around the bed to the designated "living room area." Work on laptop in the dark. Try not to wake Zach (a mere seven paces away).
6:00AM: Try to decide whether I'm nauseated or not. (I am sparing you a pedantic discussion of the difference between nauseous and nauseated. No need to thank me.) Doesn't seem like a tough call, but lack of sleep always makes me feel a little sick to my stomach when I first wake up, and then it passes within about an hour. Am due to take anti-nausea drug #1 sometime this morning (and again tomorrow morning), so I decide to take it now. Anti-nausea drug #2 remains on deck. Pee again.
6:10AM: Go back to bed. Wish I could curl up on one side or the other, but no dice. Still sore from surgery on the left and from new titanium accoutrement on the right (even without all the IV tubing). Lie on back, thinking of Gregor Samsa. Fall asleep.
7:30AM: Wide awake. Pee again, then move back to couch. Still can't tell if I'm nauseated. This really shouldn't be that hard. Try drinking some water and eating a few Ritz crackers. Feed the cats before they start meowing incessantly. (Zach still blissfully asleep.)
8:00AM: Cell phone vibrates back on my side of bed. A doctor, perhaps? Someone from the cancer center calling to make sure I'm OK? No. A wrong number.
Zach now awake.
8:30AM: I decide that hunger and nausea probably can't co-exist. I try my luck with a bowl of cereal and a banana. So far, so good.
We start hearing a weird noise emanating from the basement.
Please do NOT let it be the boiler. (There is a blizzard forecast for tonight.)
Zach investigates and confirms that it is the boiler. We give thanks for our 24/7 service contract.
(It's not the first time a major snowstorm inspired the boiler to give out. In fact, the last time it happened like this: We stay up late on a Friday, prepping for our holiday party the next night. Blizzard begins. Zach wakes up in the middle of the night in excruciating abdominal pain. I call 911 for the first time in my life. Ambulance comes. We ride to the hospital in the snow. We cancel party. I come home 14 hours later. Zach stays another three days and eventually has to have surgery a few months later. Blizzard continues. I shovel snow and spread salt. I freeze party food. Boiler dies. I'm so cold and tired I don't notice until the next day. Other boilers all over town die in solidarity. Service calls backed up almost 24 hours. I call a car service and go to Home Depot at 10PM on a Sunday and buy three space heaters—one for each apartment—as back-up. Boiler is fixed Monday morning. Space heaters save the day—um, night—until then.)
We put in a service call. The weird noise gets weirder and louder. Zach shuts off the boiler.
10:00AM: Service guy arrives, checks out boiler, needs a part. Promises to return.
Still not sure if I'm nauseated. Still hungry. Still have a minor headache. Still awake.
10:22AM: Doorbell rings. Service guy returns!
10:30AM: Zach makes me a yummy breakfast smoothie. I take my morning dose of steroids (guaranteed to keep me awake and hungry).
11:00AM: Boiler is fixed! I am back to work on a story due on Wednesday (impressed, aren't you?). I am even planning a fun pre-blizzard interview this afternoon. Hurrah! Now if I can only will myself back to sleep for a nap in between. . . .
1:30PM: No nap, but lots of good interview prep. Zach is making me a sandwich so I can have a picnic lunch in the car en route to the interview.
5:00PM: Back from fun interview, still feeling good. Snow has been falling for about an hour and is beginning to stick. Two close college pals are on their way into town—one from LA, the other from PA—and I'll get to see them tonight. Between the snow and the chemo, it looked likely that we'd have to cancel, but we've managed to salvage our plans. We're bagging dinner at a fancy restaurant downtown and are relocating the festivities to far-from-fancy Brooklyn.
12:30AM: Back from yummy dinner at Thai restaurant with Zach, college pals (hi, Linda and Lisa!), and upstairs neighbor (hi, Bill!), followed by yummy dessert and vociferous political debate at nearby Italian panini restaurant. It's the first normal Saturday night that Zach and I can remember having in two months. Good friends, good food, atmospheric snowfall, an excuse to enjoy our neighborhood—what else could we need?
I'm still feeling good and hope that I have worn myself out enough to overcome the steroids (second dose taken five hours ago) and sleep through the night. If not, there's Benadryl in the house. . . .
posted by Jody Rosen Knower at 9:50 PM
2 Comments:
Jody,
I loved the play-by-play! Glad to hear your Saturday was normal--minus the nausea debate and lots of drugs. I feel that I should be embarassed by this question, but who is Gregor Samsa--is he an Olympian?
Stine:
From Kafka's Metamorphosis:
"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was lying on his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see his domelike brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the bed quilt could hardly keep in position and was about to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his
bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes."
More info here.
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