I’m four treatments into radiation, which is daily, at 10:30 AM at Berkshire Medical Center. On the efficient days, I walk in, say hi to the techs, change, go into the zapper room and lie down, they position me, they put in the beam-benders and beam-blockers and leave the room and zap me. Then return, adjust the machinery, put in the second set of -benders and -blockers, and zap me again. Each zap is about 30 seconds. During which time the bright lights in the room go on, a red light on the ceiling that looks like a police-car light goes on, a buzzing noise fills the air, and silently and undetectably the machine beams radiation through my left breast. I lie there counting my breaths and trying to figure out how to visualize something positive about this instead of thinking of the Russian ex-spy who just died of radiation poisoning in London. Wish me luck.

So, on the good days I am dressed again, de-objectified, and out of there by 10:45 or 10:48. On the less-good days I have to wait in the waiting room until they’re ready for me. The waiting room is nicer than Albany Med’s, though–above ground, for one, and with a tall wood-covered half-barrel-vault ceiling with clerestory windows that let natural light in. Despite the relative pleasantness of the waiting room, I am keeping them a “star chart”–one star for every day I’m out of there in under 20 minutes.

Repeat every work day until the end of the third week of January, and I’m done with my treatment. Haven’t figured out how to celebrate yet. Meanwhile I suspect my hair is growing–almost invisibly, it’s so fine–but when I get dressed in the dressing room at BMC with the bright light shining down on my head I think I can see new growth between the hair that never fell out (about 2%, which I kept shaving). I guess I’ll know if I’m hallucinating in a week or so.

Okay, okay, so I’ve been trying to pretend life is it’s old boring self and haven’t had any blog-worthy thoughts in a while. Here’s something I didn’t ever relate, though: during my second chemo treatment, Eric led me through a visualization of the chemo drugs as light filling my body and shining all through it. For the next two weeks, although I didn’t feel so hot, people kept telling me I looked “luminous” or “glowing.” What’s up with THAT?

The third treatment we did the same thing but I got no luminosity comments.

So here we are, post-chemo, luminous or not–yay! Done with chemo. Yesterday was three weeks since the last treatment, so that’s done with. This last time I only felt bad until Sunday (I had mother-care, maybe that’s what helped). Now let’s just hope my eyebrows don’t all fall out (ditto eyelashes) as a belated effect of chemo–it happens. (Make a note: activate prayer circles on the topic of eyebrows.)

I am feeling pretty darn good, though not up to my usual speed or stamina on walks.

Sounds great but today, day 3, I feel rotten. So I don’t feel done with anything yet. Although the chemo nurses blew soap bubbles at me when I was ready to go on Tuesday:

Tuesday evening I felt like I had been hit all over with a sandbag (pressure evenly distributed). Yesterday my mind was sharp but I was very tired (not sleepy, body tired) and spent the day in bed as much as possible. Today my mind is fuzzier and I am still tired. Queasiness held off a bit until today, which was nice. It’s not too bad, and my flu-head (chemo headache from the Cytoxan) is worse than last time but no worse than the first two times.

These chemo symptoms for me seem like different rolls of the same few dice…different levels and onsets of the same set of side effects each time. This time around, staying in the bed (yesterday) and on the bed (today–a slight improvement–no covers necessary) seems like the right thing to do. Also, I’m trying to drink enough water and nettle tea (I didn’t manage last round, and I got a bad headache on days 5-7, plus my liver enzymes were elevated more on Tuesday when they checked) and take all my other supplements and things.

I got a book called SHOW ME that is all about breast surgery for breast cancer–lumpectomies, mastectomies, reconstructions of many different sorts, and no reconstruction. It’s mostly pictures and stories contributed by patients. Very useful! I’m putting it in the links on the right.

I realized on Sunday that what I’m doing with all these hats and bandannas is covering my head. It feels like covering. What I was doing in 1995 was hiding my head. No one else can probably tell the difference, the times I’m covering my head at least, but I can. What a relief.

There are two ways to go with the work/chemo juggling: you can go full-out, plan to live your Whole Life and make adjustments as needed as you go along–this will keep you feeling safe and normal as much as possible but will be hard work and things will go by the wayside unexpectedly (perhaps just the laundry, the dust in the corners, and the quality of lunchbox fare). Or you can decide that now is your time to lie low, take care of yourself, cut down on work and responsibilities, learn what you need to learn, explore other modes of healing that appeal to you, and do things you never give yourself time to do because of being a creative busy working mom (like read novels and hang out with friends? if you’re me).

There are benefits to both. But you can’t do both.

One thing about scheduling work and travel around chemo is that then you are home when you are busy with treatments and don’t have much energy (or maybe even feel bad), and then when you’re on the upswing, you’re off sharing your energy with…clients or friends or fellow board of committee members instead of family. It feels fine to you, but the other family members get a lot less of your energy.

It’s Friday night after chemo on Tuesday. Today I took the exam to be a Lamaze childbirth educator, which was administered in Springfield, MA. My excellent friend Lisa drove me there and back, which was key to making this crazy plan doable. The exam itself was fine–all multiple choice, on a computer, felt like a quiz game–except that when it first came up it was in Spanish. That meant over an hour’s delay while the testing center downloaded the correct test. So I was pretty tired by the time I finished and we drove home. I spent the rest of the daytime in bed reading (The Time Traveler’s Wife, excellent) and got some more energy at about 8:00 at which point Lisa and I did some henna on each other. Now it’s bedtime and I’m not feeling too bad–less queasy, and overall the flu-like headache hasn’t been so bad this round.

Tomorrow looks to be a rainy day at home with the boys while Eric goes to the Schumacher Lectures all day. I’m hoping that after I sleep in I will have energy to parent!

Next challenges after that: finishing up my PowerPoint presentation for the APHA meeting (by Sunday) and sending two class curriculums to Columbia Memorial Hospital to see if they want to hire me to teach there. Next week I’m teaching one private class to a teenage couple and one all-day class to two other couples. I have no pending doula clients, though…!

Today was my chemo-spa day again. We ran around ahead of time trying to get stuff done, but I did have time to do my mediation practice and have my flax-oil smoothie for breakfast. New York Oncology Hematology was really busy…more busy and behind than we’ve ever seen it. Apparently yesterday was even busier, at least in the chemo infusion room. Our nurse Amy (who again wasn’t our nurse this time–rats!–but she snagged us a seat near her desk again) said she had 27 patients yesterday and she usually does about half that in a day. So we got started with the chemo an hour late, almost, and didn’t finish until nearly 3:00. That was okay, because I don’t find the chemo infusion itself stressful and I don’t really mind being there. I never take work or catch-up stuff (bills, etc.) or my computer, so I just talk to Eric, read books, talk to the nurses, and relax.

Again Eric did a visualization for me about the chemotherapy drugs and how to envision them entering my body and reacting with it. It’s not about little attackers killing off cancer cells but more about light and glowing.

I gave Dr. C. (the oncologist) the 17 or so abstracts I’d pulled off of Medline about medicinal effects of certain mushrooms: immunune boosting, liver-protecting, cancer-killing effects. He said “Great, bedtime reading!” (He had sort of asked/challenged me 3 weeks ago to bring him some information, since he didn’t know about them and said he’d rather I didn’t take them during chemo.)

My “liver numbers” were again fine, despite my dangerous practice of taking herbal mushroom extracts and drinking nettle tea. My red blood cell count is down (expected, I think), and my hemoglobin & hematocrit are down too (maybe I can do something about that–I’m thinking herbal iron tonic made by my herbalist/doula/midwife friend Sarah). Yes, I take a multivitamin, and no, I wasn’t anemic before chemo. So it is transient…but if I could boost my Hg & Hct during chemo I would feel more energetic and less tired.

After chemo, while Eric picked up my Neulasta prescription at the drugstore, I went to St. Peter’s Hospital across from the drugstore to visit my doula clients who had their baby early on Monday morning. It was a great birth! And I was home by 6:40 AM. When I dropped by today they were just leaving, after 36 hours in the hospital. One night of hospital care was enough to convince them that they would get more rest at home! Of course the hospital gave them a formula bag, even though this is a third baby and the staff know she is breastfeeding exclusively. Makes me so mad! So I helped them carry their stuff down to the exit and then bopped off to connect up with Eric again. Very convenient and heartening.

Now I’m home and everyone is here (with food) for dinner. That’s my life…

At the MANA conference’s closing session I began my career of wandering around bald with no head covering. As we stood in a huge conference-hotel ballroom in a large (250 people?) circle, I was kinda daring myself to take off my bandanna. After a while I said to my friend Wendy, “I could take off my bandanna. What do you think?–No-no-no! I shouldn’t ask you what you think. I don’t care what you think.” Then I said to myself, “Oh, how hard could it be?” so I took it off.

Then I got many hugs and kisses upon my head. That was gratifying. I showed off my head until we went out to dinner.

Looking for dinner, we walked through the Inner Harbor area (stores, restaurants, many tourists) and Wendy asked, “Do you care that people are looking at you because of your head?” I said, “Are they? I hadn’t noticed…so I guess I don’t care.” That was interesting. We had been having a good conversation so I just hadn’t paid a bit of attention to peoples’ reactions to me–a lack of self-consciousness that felt very unusual for me.

Since then I haven’t really held at the forefront of my mind how people will react to me and my bald head (covered or not). Now (in my ongoing evolution as a bald person) I don’t really care much whether my head is covered or not around people I know and like. If I’m cold, I have something on my head…if I’m hot or itchy, I take it off. Sensible, no?

Tomorrow I am going to Baltimore for the MANA conference (that’s Midwives Alliance of North America). My hats and bandannas and I will be home Monday night after going to presentations, giving a presentation, going to the Division of Research meeting Monday, and hanging out with my MANA friends throughout, which I greatly look forward to. Perhaps there will be henna.

Oh! I made a first experiment in head henna with the help of my friend Arti. Here is a picture. The sexy hennaed forearm is Eric’s.

After chemo last Tuesday, my awesome nurse Amy suggested we try to call in a prescription for Neulasta and see if my insurance company would cover it that way and give it to me for $50 (my highest drug co-pay). Then my doctor in Chatham could stick me with it on Wednesday and I wouldn’t have to come back to Albany for a 3-minute appointment.

The CVS down the street from Albany Med had a dose to prescribe for me…we went to pick it up…it cost $50. List price on the receipt: $2856 or something. We took it home and put it in the fridge, and the next afternoon Dr. Jeff in Chatham did the honors and I paid him the usual $25 co-pay. The instructions for the Neulasta said, and I kid you not, “Remove injector from carton before injecting.” They don’t mess around telling you exactly how to use such expensive medicine, I guess.

So: round 1 Neulasta? Over $6,000 all told. Round 2 Neulasta? $75 total.

Health insurance is so deeply weird.

And Dr. Jeff points out that New York Oncology Hematology is criminal for charging that much for a drug. After all, it only costs $2856. How do they think they can get away with charging over twice that much? (See previous paragraph for the answer.)