Dance Party in the MRI Machine
“Everybody dance now…give me the music” C&C Music Factory screamed in the headphones that the MRI tech put over my ears. I lay on a hard narrow table with a wedge under my knees, about to enter the scan tunnel. “…come on let’s sweat, baby…let the music take control…let the rhythm move you…sweat…sweat”. The music went on. I was sweating a little bit but unfortunately not due to some awesome dance moves. I was getting a brain MRI that my melanoma doctor ordered because of the eye cancer I had. Or have? That was the question. One year and 8 months after the initial diagnosis of conjuctival melanoma and 10 months after its sneaky re-occurrence. This brain MRI was supposedly just protocol for any melanoma on the head, but my mind managed to create a monster beast of an anxiety.
The MRI tech strapped me in and put a white cage like device over my face. I felt like the Man in the Iron Mask. The cage was only about an inch above my forehead, locking me in its constrictive squeeze. This was not a good time to think about my claustrophobia episodes of the past. “Everybody dance now…” the headphones demanded. I can do this, I said to myself, just concentrate on the song.
The machine started clicking around me and then emitted a deep, steam ship like honk that lasted at least 30 seconds. The headphones fought for my attention, switching to House of Pain’s Jump Around. I closed my eyes and saw myself with my High School friends, dancing to this song in one of the many clubs in Prague. It seemed like another life, another reality. The lyrics of another song drifted in my head: “…seems like yesterday we were sixteen. We were the rebels of the rebel scene. He wore Doc Martens in the sun…drinking vintage cider having fun. We were…drinking vintage cider having fun.” Dolores O’Riordan could have written this song about us. The machine’s loud click brought me back to reality. Oh yeah, here I was, 20 years later, post eye cancer and barely post breast cancer. Continue reading
Last Chemo: The Anti-Climactic Victory
My last chemotherapy was on December 5th, 2013. The evil Taxotere, the vile Carboplatin and the wicked Herceptin. I dreamt about it for weeks, for months. It was going to be a glorious day marking the end of my torture but instead I sort of felt like a kamikaze fighter – going into the battle, terrified of the outcome.
When I walked in the infusion center for my last poison fix, I instantly got a Pavlov’s dog reflex and started breathing fast, my heart speeding up. I knew it was going to be a rough ride, my body bucking at every drop of the clear devilish bead sliding down the plastic IV tube.
As I passed armchair after armchair with their own tethered inhabitants, prisoners to the IV stands and to the snakes of clear plastic tubing, I felt my body tightening with revulsion. Shriveled looking bodies occupied the seats, heads with white hair peeked from under the hospital blankets. Some people managed to sleep while the husk of their body was pumped with chemicals, their jaws slack, ajar, revealing an empty abyss of a mouth. Were they even alive? My eyes darted from one to another and my throat felt dry.
My nurse took me to an empty chair and set about preparing my port for the infusion. We both had to put on a mask for the initial puncture. It kept tickling the bottom of my lower eyelids every time I blinked. I felt my breath fill the mask with hot air. The needle went in under my clavicle bone. The nurse attached the plastic snake of a tube and hooked it up to its cousin leading up to the bulging bag of clear agony. I noticed she put on two sets of gloves when handling the sealed bag and tubing. Then she pressed the start button on the machine and the first droplets started making their way down to my port, directly into my heart and out into my body.
Almost four hours and three deflated bags labeled as hazardous waste later, I was unshackled from the IV stand and the armchair. It was close to 3PM. I knew my time was ticking. Continue reading
The Cancer Fight Myth
When I think of a fight, I think of the battles in the Middle Ages with swinging swords and horse riders, metal armor and long marches into unknown territory, face to face combat. I think of the Matrix like bullet dodging and wall scaling. I think of cage fighting, boxing, wrestling. I think of car chases and shootouts, I think of frantic gun re-loading and fist fights in western saloons. I think of broken chairs and broken noses. I think of screams and dishes flying through the air, shattering against walls. I think of hair pulling, punching, kicking, biting, scratching and tearing. I think of dripping blood, bruises, cuts and bullet wounds. I feel the hearts racing, eyes locked in a stare, flexed muscles, shallow and fast breathing. I smell the adrenaline in the air.
Now let me tell you what cancer “fight” is.
When I got the bad news that I have a second cancer in less than a year, I felt my legs carry me out of the doctor’s office back on to the street. I was in Manhattan and there were people everywhere. Young, old, tall, short, skinny, fat, all rushing back and forth, like fish zipping around in the stream. I stood there for a minute, wanting to step into that tide of bodies and randomly grab someone by the arm and say ‘Hey, I have cancer’ or ‘Hey, I may die’ or ‘Hey, my life is fucked, I got another cancer’ and watch their reactions. I imagined their mouth would drop a little as they would try to pull away from my grasp. I imagined they would think I was crazy and just want to get away from me. So I just stood there, under the awning of the hospital.
Somehow I started moving again and made it to the train station and back home, all the while my brain shifting between denial and a complete and utter panic. The only fight like activity were probably the molecules in my head trying to prevent me from screaming at the top of my lungs “NO!!!!!”.
The next phase of the so-called cancer fight is the treatment itself. Surgery, chemotherapy and radiation is usually the yellow brick road for most people. I was lucky to bypass the radiation. However, first came the surgery. I went in, I went under and I was wheeled out. Minus two body parts – my breasts. I laid in the PACU, trying to breathe as little as possible because every fill of my lungs felt like there were little midgets in my chest stabbing me with knives. I rolled my eyeballs around helplessly trying to catch an eye of a rushing nurse. Continue reading
PET Scan a.k.a. Pure Emotional Torture
About two weeks before my PET scan, I found myself sitting on the floor, in the corner of the living room, my arms hugging my drawn up knees, tears streaking down my face. I didn’t want to go get a scan and get bad news. Again. I didn’t want to die. I lay awake at night and my brain played the same set of scenes on an endless cruel loop: Me sitting in a doctor’s office receiving news of metastatic cancer, the pitiful looks, the pats on the back. Me sliding into the scanner tunnel and the techs glancing at me with sad eyes. Me being told I have to do surgery and chemotherapy all over again but this time for an organ I can’t live without. I would wake up sweaty and stare into the darkness, knowing I wouldn’t know anything for many days.
It wasn’t always like that. My very first PET scan was a little over a year before this one. Back then, I marched in confidently, fueled by the reassurances of my eye cancer surgeon that he didn’t see any metastasis beyond my eye. I joked with the nurse and watched a movie while waiting for the radioactive injection to soak in the cells of my body. Afterwards I went to have sushi with friends, my mind carefree. About a week later, while on a vacation in Florida, I got the good news of a clear scan. No metastasis beyond my eye, just like my eye cancer surgeon, Dr. F., predicted. The only thing that I hated about the scan at that time was its price.
Then came May 2013. The second PET scan. Just a follow up, my eye surgeon assured me. I went in, still fairly confident, but for some reason a little nervous. Perhaps it was my body telling me something was not right. I went through the procedures, the injection, the scan, changing of clothes, and finally the hospital spit me out on 8th Avenue. As I rushed towards the Penn Station, I calculated which train I would be able to catch to go home and get on with my life. As I watched the screens to see which track I should go to, my cell phone rang.
“Eva? It’s Dr. F. here, I am on my way to the airport, but I wanted to talk to you about your scan before I left.” My heart sank. Dr. F. never called unless it was something important. Continue reading
The 5-Hour Brain Tumor
“So, have you noticed anything different about your eye?” My breast cancer oncologist asked, peering at my left eye with interest. The same eye that had cancer not even a year ago. It was around noon on a Tuesday, two days before my last chemo was scheduled.
“No, why?” I asked perplexed and then rushed to explain: “If you mean that it’s red, yeah, I am kind of tired today, I didn’t get much sleep…”
“No, it’s not that”, she said, circling around me, all the while staring into my eyes, “it’s just that it looks like it drifted a little. It’s not looking straight ahead like the other one.”
Huh? I thought in my head. What was she talking about? I looked at myself every day in the mirror and saw no difference, nothing weird.
“What do you think?” My oncologist turned to her colleague, the one I called ‘doctor-in-training’ because she always came into the exam room after the nurse, but before my doctor. Continue reading
Creepy Crawley Panic Attacks
They come at the most unexpected times. They slide in like an unwanted note under the door, like a tide coming in too soon, like a swarm of bees on a mission. They make my heart beat faster and faster. They fill my stomach with their poison so I don’t eat. They close up my throat so I can’t swallow. They cover my body in sweat. But mainly, they lock my brain in an endless loop of terrifying thoughts.
I lay awake at night and they creep in. I walk my dog on a sunny day and they cloud my mind. I ride on the subway and I see my thoughts dancing in front of my eyes. I eat a dinner with friends and the thoughts freeze my laugh in an instant. I am their prisoner. But yet I also hold the keys to my cell. I just don’t know how to use them. Continue reading
Body Changes: Who’s That Girl?
It’s easy to dance with pink gloves and make notorious videos if you don’t have to look at your bald self in the mirror, wishing you could put eye make up on but not doing so because you are worried the last few eyelashes and signs of femininity will disappear down the drain. Yeah, that is what I thought one of the many mornings, when I shuffled to the bathroom from my bed, shivering in the 68 degree apartment and wishing I had a bathrobe to put on. Why hadn’t I bought one yet anyway?
I only wore a T-shirt and underwear as my nighttime attire and as I leaned on the sink countertop, I stared at myself in the mirror, looking at the peach fuzz like hairs covering my skull. They were longer around the ears, and darker in certain spots on the head. I felt like there should be a chain link fence blocking my face and I should have a tattoo on my forearm. The circles under my eyes and the spindly arms sticking out of the T-shirt sleeves certainly enhanced this image. Continue reading
Side Effects: Somebody Must Want You Up There
“Somebody must really want you up there.” Said my cab driver as he looked upwards and rolled his eyes towards the sky.
I tried to smile politely meeting his eyes for a microsecond in the rearview mirror. I was on the way home from the hospital, just having received a white blood cell forming booster shot that would cost $8,000 if I didn’t have health insurance. I shivered with waves of chills caused by the fever that enveloped my body that morning. A whole 24 hours earlier than expected. My stomach felt like there was a bowling ball rolling around haphazardly. My head buzzed, my throat was starting to hurt and I knew it was only going to get worse. Continue reading
Terminator Eye: The Day After
I woke up on Saturday, July 7, the day after my eye cancer tumor removal surgery and my first thought was: The Eye. Can I still see from it? I tried to open it a little bit and felt sharp pain slice through. I also felt another wave of nausea. I sat up in the bed. My head throbbed. I tried opening my eyes again. The good eye opened half way and the room spun around me. Was I going to throw up again? I took a couple deep breaths and swung my legs out of the bed. I needed to look at my eye. Now. I needed to see what it looked like.
When we discussed the surgery, only four days earlier, Dr. F. showed me on his computer screen how much conjuctiva he was going to cut out from my eye on each side of the iris. To my horror, it looked like he was cutting out all of the visible surface. He said he was then going to stretch out the rest of the tissue over the eye and sew it together.
I felt my way through the apartment into the bathroom. Reflexively I turned on the light. It hit my eyes like a sun flare. I slapped it back off. Instead I cracked the blinds open just a little bit. I turned to the mirror and took a deep breath. I tried to open the bad eye again. My eyelashes were stuck together. I turned on the water and gently rubbed the eyelashes between my fingers until the top ones separated from the bottom ones. Every move of every eyelash felt like a knife slicing through my eye. I turned to the mirror again. I slowly opened the eye. Continue reading
Ready. Set. Eye Cancer Surgery!
Having my eye cancer tumor removal surgery performed in a place called “The Eye and Ear Infirmary” conjured up images of the Middle Ages, iron tools, doctors in wigs and screams of pain coming from the hospital rooms. Instead, my husband dropped me off in front of a modern building in Manhattan. On the way to the reception desk, I encountered people whose eyes or ears were in different stages of bandage. Everybody was with somebody, guiding them through, helping them sit down, opening doors for them. I sat down and tried to rein in the rising panic. What if I lose my sight? What am I going to look like? Will I be disfigured? Will the cancer spread behind my eye into my head? I had a full blown meltdown the day before at home, telling my husband that if I go blind, he would have to go to the bad part of the city and get me some drugs so I could commit suicide. He calmly replied that he would not help me kill myself.
When the receptionist called me to go in the back, I had to sign a stack of papers with various permissions, warnings and authorizations that I didn’t have time to read. A red binder with my name and with all those papers in it was shoved in my hands and I was to report to the third floor. When I arrived there, a nurse took me to a locker room and instructed me in her thick Polish accent to pee in a cup, then pour it in the test tube she gave me, change my clothes and come out.
I emerged wearing cotton pants, sock-o-shoes: socks with plastic dots on the sole, a cotton shirt that opened in the back and a dark blue cotton bath robe. Another nurse took me to a room and questioned me about everything including whether or not I have painted toenails. Then she proceeded to drip eye dilating drops and antibiotics in my left eye – the bad cancer eye. The way she did it was that she held the dropper about 12 inches above my tilted face so by the time the drop reached my terrified eyeball, it hit it like a water balloon. Continue reading
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