Last week was odd, to say the least. Noo started interferon therapy, and this went smoothly--she's taking it like a champ, side effects and all. We're lucky to have some help, in the form of our Girl Friday, who can take Noo to the infusion center when I can't. However, I was able to go with her three out of the five treatment days last week, which is pretty good considering I was covering night shifts for the hospitalist service.
While I'm grateful things are going so well for Noo, inwardly I felt completely insane last week. There is something about sitting at an infusion center, surrounded by chemo patients and the everyday reality of cancer ("How long did it take for your hair to grow back?" one woman asked Noo, and we had to explain she'd only lost a 2x3 inch patch of scalp during her skin graft) which makes a person question what normal life is. For cancer patients, normal is having a PICC line or a Port-a-Cath, wearing hats, and talking about their selfhood in tumor stages. But it is also having a good sense of humor--"Yes, this is a wig. Doesn't it look like a wig? I couldn't find one that looked like real hair, so I went for the one that looked most fake"--and a vast reservoir of patience. Some people run out of patience at the end of a long day--we've witnessed exasperation and overhead more than our fair share of profanity at the end of the day at the infusion center--and I don't blame them. I don't think cancer patients have any moral obligation to be better than the rest of us. No one who is trying to survive should be expected to set a good example.
After getting home with Noo, I usually had just enough time for a short nap before turning the hospitalist pager on. Night shifts in our program depend utterly on how busy the ER is, the phase of the moon, and how much idiocy is taking place on our rural highways. I had several nights with back-to-back admissions which kept me in the hospital past midnight, but I also had a few nights with no admissions, and at least one with no calls at all.
My problem is I don't sleep well during a stretch of night shifts. It doesn't matter whether I had to do four admissions or if I got to stay at home all evening, when midnight rolls around I go to bed uneasily because the pager is still on and could go off at any time. Most of the time the calls I get after midnight are for anxiolytics or sleeping pills, but every so often there is some giant crisis that happens in the wee small hours of the morning and I'll have to jump out of bed and hotfoot it to the hospital. So I don't sleep well. Most of what I do is lie in bed in a semi-doze, starting awake at every noise and wondering what the hell is going on?
After a week of nights like this, I tend to succumb to fatalism, cynicism, irritable depression, frazzled nerves in general. It takes several unencumbered nights before I get a bounce back in my step, and only today did I begin to believe life doesn't suck again.
As bad as it can be, keeping crazy hours is much better for me than clocking in and clocking out of an 8 to 5 job. At least it's never boring. Exhausting, but not boring.
write better. snap out of it.
Posted by: jimmy | March 07, 2009 at 09:55 PM
Hang in there, and Noo as well. I'm going with my friend as she goes chemo, and I will observe first hand the wigs and scarves. Get some rest, nutritious food and some exercise, okay? Doctor's orders! :)
Posted by: PookieMD | March 06, 2009 at 01:23 PM
I wouldn't worry about the wigs, once it gets warm they tend to go by the wayside anyway. And you are absolutely right, the definition of normal is inevitiably and irrevocably changed by cancer, especially when the treatment is long. Best wishes to both you and Noo.
Posted by: emmy | March 04, 2009 at 07:06 AM
You and Noo remain in my thoughts.
Posted by: rlbates | March 04, 2009 at 05:08 AM