Commentary: You Never Leave the Room
“Those of us who come to give our support, we do our best not to look around the [chemo] room. At the same time, it's hard to look at the person we've come with, because it's hard to imagine that this is really happening to us. ”
Laurie Singer and Leroy Sievers. Courtesy of Leroy Sievers
The following essay is from the NPR My Cancer weekly podcast:
We all like to joke that it's "all about me." And to a great degree, the My Cancer project is mostly about me. I'm the one with cancer, after all. But that doesn't even come close to the reality of all this. I'm not the only victim.
For twenty years, Laurie Singer, also a journalist, and I have lived together. And all those years, she has waited and worried while I went off to cover some war somewhere. These days, she waits and worries while I fight another war, not in some far-off desert or jungle, but in a hospital. In the chemo room.
The room is crowded, hardly a space for family members or friends to hang out. When you go there, you want to be supportive. Your life has changed too. In Leroy's case, life was chugging along at warp speed. He was in his dream job at Nightline.
Then a routine colonoscopy almost five years ago sucked the air right out of our world.
Maybe you've seen "the look." I don't think the doctors and nurses mean to have it. They certainly don't practice it in the mirror in the morning. But it seeps through the layers of their eyes. A mixture of dread, sadness and distress — and it happens in a flash. I saw it on the nurse who summoned me to the room where Leroy was resting, post-colonoscopy.
A few minutes later, the doctor carried in vivid images of the cancerous tumor that will haunt Leroy for the rest of his life. It would have to come out — a major resectioning of his colon. And along with it, lots of lymph nodes to biopsy. This is the way they think they can tell if the cancer has spread. The nodes were clean. No chemo ordered. Go home and heal. Have a good life.
Until you're sitting in a restaurant one night, as we were a few years later, when I noticed Leroy's face was drooping. The face of cancer was staring back at me. Leroy had MRIs in the ER and we saw "the look" again. This time, it came from the doctor who read the tests.
Then it was brain surgery — one tumor gone, but CT scans revealed more tumors. There were new doctors. A cancer center and a road map to the chemo room.
This is a place that sets medicine back to the Dark Ages. The medicine they pump into the patients is better than ever, but it's the way they present it that boggles the mind. A big room filled with old recliners, t-stands with IV bags hanging, pumps ticking away as the drops of poison pass through the yards of clear plastic tubing. The conversations among the folks forced to come here vary from "What do you have?" to "How far have you come to get it?" The skin tones of the patients speak louder than any of their answers. And those of us who come to give our support, we do our best not to look around the room. At the same time, it's hard to look at the person we've come with, because it's hard to imagine that this is really happening to us.
In Leroy's case, he looks like he should be anywhere but in a room full of cancer patients. He sticks out, and it's not because he's 6 feet 5. His skin is pink and healthy, the chemo hasn't taken away his hair, he hasn't lost weight. He's the anti-chemo poster boy. But there he is, with that damn needle in his arm, sitting there for hours waiting for that last drop of poison to drip into his blood stream.
We've made many trips to the chemo room now. Sometimes I leave and walk the brick-lined streets of Baltimore, Stop at a bakery where they make some great cookies that have a huge chocolate drop on top — a Leroy favorite. The only good thing about being on chemo? Cookies with big chocolate drops on top move to the top of the food pyramid!
But the room and the image of him sitting there never leaves my mind. I can walk those streets, people-watch and see the world moving on. But my world is back in that room where Leroy is fighting with every healthy cell in his body to live.
There's not a song on the iPod that can drown out that image, not a chapter in the best book that can create an escape route. Even on the other side of chemo, you never leave that room.
-- Laurie Singer
7:09 AM ET | 07-17-2006 | permalink
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