This is Chapter 4 in the Cancer Memoir. Catch up with previous chapters here.
I have rewritten this part of my cancer journey a handful of times. I am trying to find the best words to describe the first five months of my active cancer fight. In just five months, I watched my body slowly transform into a completely different person, from losing my hair, eyelashes and eyebrows, gaining weight, and being unable to walk up and down the bleachers at my daughter’s soccer games without assistance. I not only struggled with the physical but also the mental, coming to terms with the fact that I was doing all of this to save my life. My focus was to block out the doubt and fear, but what if this does not work? How much time would I have left? All of this is going on in my brain while remembering I am married to someone serving on active duty. So here we go.
On January 4, 2024, I walked through the cancer center’s double doors to go back to the chemo chair. All I could think about was: This is it. Here we go. This is day one of my cancer fight.
Before walking back, my nurse had us make a quick pit stop at the scale to record my height and weight. You might be asking yourself why this matters. I was, too, until I learned that my dose of chemo drugs was based on my body mass index. So, before each chemo treatment, I would step up on the scale.
I was so nervous. I forgot to put lidocaine cream on my skin around my port and eat breakfast that day – two things I would never forget again. I sat down in the oversized, very comfortable brown chemo chair, setting my Stanley cup next to me, my chemo bag down on the ground, and looked out a beautiful large window facing a very nice courtyard. Jeremy made his way to a chair in the corner. This area would become our little space.
My nurses at the cancer center were seriously some of the best humans on this planet. I wouldn’t have done as well as I did without these beautiful people. Before they began anything, they would walk us through what they were about to do. Accessing my port was step one. This step was where I learned just how important putting my lidocaine cream on my skin at my port site was. To access my port they used a quarter-sized device with a pretty big needle on the end of it to puncture my skin. This is how I would receive my chemo infusions. Over the bi-weekly and weekly treatments, my cancer nurses would become like family to me. There were a couple of times I had to do chemo by myself, and these nurses made sure I never felt alone.
After accessing my port, we would start pre-meds and then move on to my chemo infusion. Seeing my nurses suit up for my first chemo infusion was something else. It reminded me of that episode of The Office when Dwight dressed in a radiation suit, just without the big headgear and oversized gloves. I remember giggling to myself, seeing this. A little comic relief before starting this BIG step.
My first chemo infusion was about to get underway. Two very giant syringes of the Red Devil, adriamycin, were slowly administered to me, followed up with a bag of cyclophosphamide. I was almost done with my first chemo infusion with no surprises until my nose started to burn. I mentioned to Jeremy that my nose felt funny and was beginning to burn; it felt like when you are swimming and water gets up it. My nurse overheard me saying this and immediately rushed in to stop my chemo drugs. My ears were bright red, and I had a rash down my neck and shoulders, and all of a sudden, I felt extremely hot – I was having an allergic reaction to my chemo drugs. This would happen six more times, a mild response, but it still worried me. I worried about not being able to finish chemotherapy; I worried that if we had to stop or change plans, what would that mean for me and working toward saving my life? When I arrived for chemo treatment number seven, my oncologist, the cancer center pharmacists, and the head nurse would spend over an hour coming up with a plan to keep these allergic reactions from happening. And so, lucky number seven chemo infusion would be the first one I would have without an allergic reaction, thanks to my incredible cancer team. Their plan worked! Moving forward we would follow the New Plan to a T for the remaining 10 sessions. I had my first chemo session under my belt. My new routine. Each time, walking into the cancer center, I felt less and less nervous and anxious.
I knew my hair would fall out. After having my chemo class and receiving the news that the three different chemo drugs all would cause hair loss, I knew this would be happening. But I did not expect how fast my hair would fall out. By chemo treatment number two, my hair was already starting to come out in small clumps. After getting hooked up, I remember snuggling up in my chemo chair with the heated seat on, wrapped in a heated blanket, watching the snow falling on the ground, Jeremy was sleeping in his little chair, and I began absentmindedly running my fingers through my hair. Unexpectedly it just started falling out. At this moment, I knew I would never look the same as I did before. As my friend Samatha would later say, this was the beginning of Stacy 2.0.
After getting chemo number two on January 18, my hair became so itchy and matted that I reached out to my friend Mandy, who owns a salon. On January 22, we decided to go with a buzz cut. I was not ready to go 100% bald, and I didn’t think my children were either. I am so glad we did this step. It was less of a shock to my family and to me. A couple of days passed, and I had little spiky hairs falling out like crazy, so on January 30, I was back in Mandy’s salon, getting my head shaved entirely. As I walked out of her salon, I sat in my car, turned up the volume, and sang at the top of my lungs, “This is Me,” from The Greatest Showman. Because this was me, embracing the new me, Stacy 2.0, bald and beautiful. Cancer thriver!
Sometimes, on a breast cancer journey, you can feel helpless. I knew going into chemotherapy, there would be some challenging moments, highs, and lows. The first time I felt helpless was when I experienced not being able to get chemotherapy for the first time. My white blood cell count was fantastic; I had energy, was drinking so much water, and felt good. But my liver, on the other hand, was having a tough time keeping up and was struggling. My nurse gave me the news. I could not receive treatment that day. I felt like such a failure; I was angry at myself, at my body. I had successfully completed four rounds of AC and was on week two of my weekly Taxol treatment. As Jeremy and I drove home, I sat in anger and disappointment in myself. Jeremy could see this and said to me, “Babe, your body just needed a break. It needed a week off.” He was so right! My body was working overtime to help me in this fight, it needed a break. I needed to give myself and my body grace. This would happen again, not being able to receive chemo treatment, but my reaction the next time was different.
I have only scratched the surface of what 16 rounds of chemotherapy looked like for me. I am ending this Friday’s story with this: Give yourself grace, my friend. If you are walking a hard journey take a breath and remember, this is a chapter, not your whole story. Keep going. Shine on!