21

Tough crowd today in the green room! No eye contact, no smiles, no nods from the other patients or hangers about. It’s like everyone has cancer and is going through a brutal treatment or something. Or maybe it was the awful Tilly hat I have taken to wearing because it actually provides shade for my whole neck, which is important when it’s insanely hot out. It was a t-shirt, sweat shorts and that. No sense in dressing up to go outside, walk fast, get covered in sweat and then get zapped. Luckily, I had a student paper to read and I just discovered the New York Times iPhone app, which downloads the whole thing into memory, so I read away, blissfully ignoring the socially awkward situation.

This whole slow onset of side effects thing is just surreal. The dry crackly feeling is slowing starting to flower into pain, and it’s surprising what bothers me and what doesn’t. Today I ate crackers with no problem, but long pasta with porcini mushrooms tonight kind of hurt. I ate it anyway, figuring it’s my last shot at it for awhile. You’d think the dry crumbly thing would be worse than the smooth, easy to chew thing. Go figure.

I’m sure that would have been better in haiku.

22

Today’s word of the day is “iatrogenesis.” It means medicine-caused illness. I stumbled across it reading a Jody Berland essay on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome this morning. She attributes it to Ivan Illich’s usage in his writings on medicine (for instance, this piece. But I suspect the term has a longer history worth looking up.

In any event, it is the latest stop in my wanderings through the existential forest of “is it cancer or the ‘cure’ that is making me feel sick?” I wonder whether my side effects fall into the category of iatrogenetic. It would seem that they do, in the sense that the treatments I am undergoing actually do damage my body. The effects are more or less known and predictable. Does it change the meaning of the dry crackly feeling in my throat this morning as I swallowed my toast? What does it mean that it’s the treatment and not the cancer?

23

I am definitely overthinking things.

I had originally said I don’t want to sit in the Green Room, I wanted to sit in the big sunny waiting room.

The thing is, then am I somehow ditching the other cancer patients going through EBR? There is a social scene in the waiting area. Of course everyone’s story is different. And it seems to me like the family members carry most of the emotional burden, rather than the other patients, which further supports my earlier thesis about the projection of “bravery” and all those other emotions that are supposed to go with cancer.

I am not certain if this actually happened, but I think a woman waiting for her father said something about them finding a cure for cancer soon, and I may have replied that I certainly hope so, but then something else will kill us all eventually. You know, because humans are not immortal. I was not trying to be morbid. I hope I didn’t actually say that but I at least thought it. Luckily, that was one of the 4:15 appointments, and I’m on 12:30 now. So maybe the other Green Room People need to be protected from me. Even if I do just sit there and put my hair in pigtails, mostly.

But of course who wouldn’t want a cure? Personally, I would settle for less medieval treatments to start.

Which leads to another existential question I am currently overthinking. My symptoms are now not symptoms of someone who has cancer but symptoms of someone who has been treated for cancer. Hypothyroidism because I don’t have a thyroid, a bit of a radiation burn (alas, it does not look like I’ve been in the sun). I have no immediate anxiety about the disease or my mortality. I know thyroid cancer is a chronic condition, not something that is cured, but I can live with that as it seems to be under control. For now, there is just some dread about EBR side effects, but that’s mostly still in the future tense and EBR certainly isn’t going to kill me. Does that make a difference? I have no idea. Maybe this is where that “good cancer” part comes in.

I do hate that phrase.

Today’s Haiku:

Redness visible.
Not like a suntan. Too bad.
Weak fashion statement.

25

Back in graduate school, one of our cats (Ya-Ya) was acting out and attacking the other cat. Like all cats, he is pretty terrified of the vet. We took him anyway, and they suggested a pet psychologist. (You know where this is headed, right?) So the pet psychologist comes into the vet examination room, and there is our cat on the vet table. The pet psychologist starts talking to us. She couldn’t talk to the cat, but she hardly even interacted with him. It was all about modifying our behavior. She said a lot of things that presupposed we lived in a big apartment with lots of space and could do all sorts of stuff to the cat that we really couldn’t do. She went on and on talking to us. For a like half an hour. Eventually, we all look down and our cat has fallen asleep on the cold, metal table in the terrifying vet office.

Waste. Of. Money.

I tell you this story because at one point in today’s treatment, while attached to a cold, metal table and immobilized via a form-fitting mask with a mouthpiece, I caught myself dozing off. So now I know how my cat must have felt. Alas, it also means I made no progress on learning the long middle part of the routine. There’s always tomorrow.

I have not much else to report. The weekend was largely uneventful, somewhat social and I felt okay, and Monday there was no beam. I’m getting some of my own work done and making some music. We are also hooked on the hockey playoffs now, though Game 1 was a real bust.

Today’s Symptom Haiku:

Drowsy after beam
No immediate effects
Psychosomatic?

26

Announcing an exciting new feature of cancer blogging: symptom Haikus! Since at the beginning of EBR I won’t be able to tell whether most symptoms are actual side effects or just things happening in my body, and they come on slowly and cumulatively, the minimalist form of the Haiku seems appropriate. It also gives form to “hmm, my neck itches. I wonder if it’s just itchy or if it means something more?” So, without further delay:

26

Seems my neck itches.
A bit of redness shows up.
Two days off. Try the cream.