Update: September 14, 2009
When we walked into the waiting area, the announcers on the TV were just getting to the M's. The nurses at the Manhattan radiology center where I was about
to have a PET scan had tuned the TV to news coverage of the annual September 11th anniversary memorial taking place downtown.
My husband and I paused as the announcer, a relative of a 9-11 victim, read our neighbor's name. Then we sat down and waited for my turn in the PET scan machine.
Normally, I'd have driven myself to my post-cancer scan, but on Friday, I wasn't feeling too great. A sinus infection had moved into my chest where, it seems,
it wreaked havoc on the nerve damage in my lungs caused by chemotherapy and radiation. Plus, it was pouring rain outside, and I knew the FDR Drive
would be backed up. Better to have my husband brave the two-hour commute (over just 30 miles). Besides, then I could text my friends.
"It's scan day. Puppies and rainbows," I e-mailed to my writer friends, asking them for "Zen for Jen." They replied by adding even more happy thoughts to the list.
By the time the nurse gave me my pre-test radiation shot, it included:
puppies
rainbows
hummingbirds
ice cream
butterflies
baby roses sparkling in morning dew
sunrise or sunset so beautiful it takes your breath away
music that makes your hear float in ecstacy
and all good things that make good thoughts and positive energy ...
And chocolate!
I drank the awful banana gunk -- CT contrast -- this time choosing not to "order" rum from the nurse. My seventh scan in two years,
perhaps it was time to retire the joke. On such a solemn day in New York, it didn't feel appropriate anyhow.
After I finished the scan, we got back into the car and headed home in less traffic, but more rain. At home, I settled onto the couch,
figuring I wouldn't get the results until the next day. But then my cell phone rang, and my oncologist gave me the good news: "No sign of disease," he cheered.
I asked him if my upcoming two years in remission mark meant that my scans would go from four months apart to every six months. He replied, "Well, there's new thinking that two years is it."
In other words: CURED -- a word I didn't expect to hear for another three years after many more PET scans.
I'm liking the new thinking.
On Sunday, we went to church, where the lyrics of one hymn made me darn near cry:
Leave behind your former self and live.
Don't look back, don't be afraid; follow.
In my head, I added, "And chocolate!"
Jen
Update: January 9, 2009
The magic word was "birthday," but I didn't know it until it came out of my mouth. An office manager
at the radiology center where I'd scheduled my quarterly PET scan was telling me that I couldn't get it.
Something about an insurance company "mix-up" and "more clinical information" and "We're trying to find your doctor."
I reminded her that the insurance company had approved the scan the day before, and that my doctor's office called me to tell me so.
I told her how I'd rescheduled the scan because of a. the ice storm on Wednesday and b. my insurance company's delay in approving my scan in the first place.
I told her she could put the scan on my credit card and we'll straighten this out later. I wasn't leaving without my scan.
She said that the insurance company wouldn't allow me to do that.
And that's when I lost it, and blurted out the magic word.
"They approved this yesterday, I drove all the way in here this morning...and it's my BIRTHDAY!"
Suddenly, her face changed. Everybody in the waiting area stared as she backpedaled, promising I'd get my scan.
"I know this is stressful for you," she assured me. And here, I had been trying to pretend it wasn't. So what if it was my birthday? I told myself.
But it bothered me more than I'd thought.
Meanwhile, wonderful birthday wishes were streaming in on my PDA from Facebook and on e-cards. Several people suggested I "do something fun"
for my special day. I didn't have the heart to tell them I was about to be injected with radiation and scanned to see if lymphoma had returned.
An e-mail came in from another non Hodgkin's lymphoma survivor who'd friended me online. I'd asked him how come it took so darn long
to diagnose his cancer -- six months. "It was March when I went back after I started to cough up blood," he wrote. "My doctor told me after the cat scan
that he didn't think it was anything to worry about and that he didn't think it was cancer. Boy was he wrong."
By the time I got into the pre-scan room, I was a tad overwhelmed. I sent an e-mail to my friend Robin about the situation. Later, she told me that my message was
"brought to you by the letter F." I told my friend Jenna that I'd wished the radiation they injected into my veins came with a side of Percocet. She agreed that this would
be a fine courtesy.
In the scan room, I gave the tech my CD selection for the day: Bruce Springsteen's "Tracks," disc 2, which I listened to from inside the machine.
Turns out, I probably should have reviewed the songs on this disc,
because it includes "Take 'Em As They Come":
Little girl, gone are birthdays
Faded away into the clear blue night.
Take em as they come, girl
Take em, baby, as they come.
Not exactly "Stairway to Heaven," but next time, I'm bringing in instrumentals only.
This morning, my oncologist called with the good news. "Jenniferrrrr," he sang. "All clear."
When I heard the first few notes of the song coming from my son's CD player, I cringed.
Please God. Don't let this be that song about the kid who buys shoes for his dying mother, I thought. But I knew that his teacher wouldn't send something
like that home with my son. She knows what we've been through. Besides, that's a Christmas song, and this was Mother's Day.
It turned out to be an equally heart-tugging song about "all mom does for me," yada, yada, yada. I stopped listening when I felt the tears start to well up. I hugged my
10-year-old and thanked him for the lovely song, and then I tried not to spend the rest of the holiday in a funk, worrying about the PET scan I was going to have on Tuesday.
This time, I didn't tell him I was due for my routine scan to make sure the lymphoma hadn't returned. He'd told me last month that he didn't want to know "until after, and only if it's good."
So, if it's "bad," then what would I say? "I'm going to Paris for a month. Don't listen to anyone who says anything about a bone marrow transplant. Au revoir!"
I didn't find out the results of my scan until Wednesday morning. My doctor called while I was in the middle of working out with my friend Cheryl, the mother of a brain tumor survivor.
She heard me say, "So it's all clear? Nothing lit up at all?" Then she ran over to me and hugged me, while we both jumped up and down together, laughing until we got all teary eyed.
And there wasn't even a sad song on the CD player.
When I picked my son up from school that afternoon, I gave him the news.
"I thought something was going on," he admitted. And then he agreed that next time, I should tell him when I'm getting a scan.
"They're a routine part of my life now," I assured him, and he nodded.
Funk not included.
Jen
P.S. Check out the video of me reading, "Good Night? Yeah, Right: Nobody Sleeps Here" at Comic Strip Live for National Moms Nite Out. The best part is that under my sweater, there were seven dorky
Band-Aids where I'd just had my radiation tattoos zapped in an effort to get rid of them for good. Yeah, I'm cool.
Update: June 29, 2009
I was half-way up the hill yesterday before I realized what a big deal it was. Not the hill so much, but that I was not only walking up it, but carrying
three heavy wooden chairs to return to my next-door neighbors, who live up a fairly steep hill. On the way back, I pointed out the significance of
the trip to my son, Nicholas, 12,
who'd carried one of the folding chairs we'd borrowed for a piano recital at our house.
"I remember when walking up this hill, shortly after I finished cancer treatments, seemed like walking up Mount Washington," I explained. "I was going next door for a jewelry party, but
you'd think I was planning for a trip across the country, the way I psyched myself up for it.
And now I can carry three chairs up the hill -- and not need a nap afterwards."
He smiled.
I smiled, too. Not just because of how far I've come since two years ago when I underwent chemotherapy and radiation treatments.
But because cancer is defining me less and less as I get farther and farther away from it. Or so I tell myself.
Two years ago this week, I watched the Macy's Fireworks in New York City from my hospital room. Well, I had to sit on the vent and press my face against the window to get a good
glimpse. But that proved too tiring, so I gave up and watched them on TV like everyone else, the booms from the fireworks over the East River acting like surround-sound to my TV.
At the end of the week, my husband arrived to take me "down the Shore" as we say here in New Jersey, on a family vacation.
My oncology nurse, Robert, was speeding up my chemo infusion so I could get out after five long days (after 20 other long days before that) in the hospital, and the Benedryl was making me woozy.
As I dozed in and out, missing entire sets of Wimbledon tennis on TV in what felt like only minutes, I heard my roommate ask Robert, "When she leaves, can I have her bed?" The bed with the view of the East River.
He replied, "If she leaves."
I bolted awake and chastised him: "I don't care if you have to strap my bed on top of my mini-van, I'm leaving here and going down the Shore today!" He smiled and replied, "That's the attitude!"
And then I fell back asleep.
It was, indeed, a big deal to walk up that hill yesterday, chairs in hand. And what we went through two years ago was a huge deal. But that hill is getting easier to overcome, too.
When we walked into the waiting area, the announcers on the TV were just getting to the M's. The nurses at the Manhattan radiology center where I was about
to have a PET scan had tuned the TV to news coverage of the annual September 11th anniversary memorial taking place downtown.
My husband and I paused as the announcer, a relative of a 9-11 victim, read our neighbor's name. Then we sat down and waited for my turn in the PET scan machine.
The magic word was "birthday," but I didn't know it until it came out of my mouth. An office manager
at the radiology center where I'd scheduled my quarterly PET scan was telling me that I couldn't get it.
Something about an insurance company "mix-up" and "more clinical information" and "We're trying to find your doctor."
I was half-way up the hill yesterday before I realized what a big deal it was. Not the hill so much, but that I was not only walking up it, but carrying
three heavy wooden chairs to return to my next-door neighbors, who live up a fairly steep hill. On the way back, I pointed out the significance of
the trip to my son, Nicholas, 12,
who'd carried one of the folding chairs we'd borrowed for a piano recital at our house.