My life on drugs

Where do I start?  I have tried several times before to write this particular post and have had a really hard time doing so.  In the past, whenever I wrote a post for my blog I was able to simply write what was happening to me and lay out each event as best I could.  There is an effortlessness in writing this way - to simply remember and write.  However, each time I tried to write about my life on Chemotherapy I got frustrated with how negative my story quickly became.  And how dangerously close my words and tone came to whining.  That type of writing is annoying.  It annoys me.  I got fed up with how it sounded.  Nobody wants to read a “poor me” sob story.  And I don’t want to write it.  So I would usually just scrap what I had written and tell myself that I’d try again another day.  Maybe with a little more success.

This post was also difficult to write because I was never feeling good enough to write.  While on chemo, I lost a lot of motivation, especially when it came to writing about how bad I was feeling while feeling bad.  Does that make sense?  I hope so.  But now I have been off my chemo drugs for four weeks and I am beginning to feel better - I am slowly becoming more like myself.  I am becoming less and less nauseous from the smell of hand soap or from the taste of my toothpaste as I brush my teeth.  And now I am beginning to carry out my normal day to day activities like a regular person.  And that means I think I am ready to write again about my experiences.  So here it goes.  My life on drugs.

My drugs consisted of a four drug combination regimen of Adriamycin, Bleomycin, Vinblastine, and Dacarbazine.  Or ABVD for short.  To be honest with you, just thinking of these drugs fills me with anxiety and nausea right now.  It’s kind of surprising to see how affected I am by the mere thought of these drugs four weeks after my last treatment.  I was given this four drug cocktail every two weeks for over six months.  I would usually receive ABVD on a Friday and feel like death for a week and then slowly feel better until the next treatment began and then - BAM - death all over again.  You may be asking, “But Nathan, what does death feel like exactly?”  And that is a great question and one that I don’t know if I can answer to your satisfaction.  But I’ll try.

To begin with, Chemotherapy sucks.  It not only sucks, but it sucks balls.  Big, fat, hairy balls.  (Sorry for the blue language, but it’s true).  There is nothing - I repeat - NOTHING good about receiving chemotherapy.  Sure, it can kill your cancer, but make no mistake about it, it kills you while doing so.   And this is why I feel the best way to describe Chemotherapy is to liken it to death.  Most people often gain their impression of Chemotherapy by hearing the many nasty side effects of Chemotherapy.  Nausea, diarrhea, constipation, mouth sores, throat sores, hair loss, flu-like symptoms, weakness, and many more.  But those symptoms alone don’t fully illustrate what it feels like to be on Chemotherapy.  Because underneath all of these symptoms is a feeling far worse than all of them combined - it’s death.  It really is.  Imagine having the worst flu possible and all you want to do is just sleep and ignore the pain.  And you do that.  You do sleep.  Whenever you can.  I would sleep for days after my chemotherapy if I was able.  I would wake up at noon, eat toast, and then go back to bed.  However, chemo isn’t entirely like the flu in that sleep doesn’t help alleviate the pain.  You see, when you have a flu, you usually sleep and allow your body to fight off whatever bug is in your system.  When you wake up from hours of sleep, you generally feel a little better as your body has successfully combated the virus.  With Chemotherapy, you fall asleep with poison in your body. And you wake up with the same amount of poison in your body.  It didn’t go anywhere.  It’s still there.  In fact, sometimes I felt worse after waking up because as I was sleeping, more of my body was killed off by the drugs.  And all you want for days after receiving treatment is just to feel better.  Not to feel death throughout your whole body.  Not to smell it in your sweat.  Or your urine.  Or your breath.  I would smell the drugs as they worked their way out of my body and I felt dirty.  And tired.  And sad.  Starting to whine a little here.  Need a detour.

Last year when I began this adventure, I came upon a verse from the bible that has meant a lot to me throughout this struggle.  For those of you who don’t know, I am a Christian.  So I am sorry if my speaking about the bible makes you uncomfortable.  Well, wait - not really.  I’m not sorry.  It’s who I am.  Anyway, the verse is found in Romans.  Romans 12:12 to be exact and it goes a little something like this:

“Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer”

Even thinking about this verse now makes me somewhat emotional.  I have grown attached to these words and these words became my mantra as I struggled through my early symptoms and then onto cancer treatment.  When I was in pain from not being able to urinate.  Or every time I used a catheter.  And each time I felt like throwing up, I would run through this verse.  It helped.  It continues to help.  It reminds me what to focus on.  Granted, I had a few blow up moments for sure.  I told God that He sucked and that this should not be happening to me.  After all, He designed this body.  This is His creation.  Why isn’t it working?  But after I would have my little hissy fit and calm down, I realized being angry didn’t help me pee any better.  It didn’t heal me.  Blowing a fuse wasn’t the answer.  The answer was hope, patience, and prayer.

And I was right to have hope.  I was right to be patient.  I was right to faithfully pray.  After all, look where I am today.  Over a year and a half after all this has started, my cancer is gone.  Some of you may say that the drugs got rid of my cancer, and that’s absolutely true.  But the drugs didn’t sustain me.  The drugs didn’t keep my hopes up.  Not even close.  In fact, as I mentioned bluntly earlier in this post, the drugs sucked.  Cancer wasn’t the worst part of my illness these last six months, chemo was.  Chemotherapy was what I needed to endure - not cancer.  And these words found in Romans helped me do that.

So then getting back to my thoughts on Chemotherapy.  What do I really think about it?  I hate it and I curse it every chance I get, but it has taken away my cancer.  It has taken away the fear of losing my life to this horrible illness.  It has taken away the fear of never seeing my kids grow up.  It has taken away the fear of never growing old with Erin.  In the end, it has given me my family and for that I am grateful, bitterly grateful at times, but grateful all the same.