My day at the cancer center yesterday went extremely well. We got there on time, and fortunately the staff was all on time, too, so I was out of there by 6:30 PM. I always forget that the TDM-1 infusions take only 30 minutes, once all the rigamarole is over. That’s a very early departure, considering yesterday was the latest start time I’ve ever had.
In contrast, A/C and Taxotere, the “hard” chemos I got last year, took four hours to infuse, followed by a one-hour observation period to make sure I had survived. Plus we need an hour in advance to set up the cold caps to freeze my scalp so I could keep my hair. (See earlier entries for details.) Those days were so long my husband and I would often not get home until 10:00 at night, although our days started before 9 AM.
But back to yesterday. As I blogged before my appointment, I was too queasy to eat anything after breakfast, so by the time 4:00 and 5:00 rolled around I was ravenously hungry. But I’ve learned never to eat in the chemo chair, no matter how hungry I am.
Before this whole ordeal began, I remember reading that you should be careful what food or drinks you consume during chemo. You will never want to see them again afterwards, since you will forever associate them with being sick. One woman said she can no longer stand the sight of M&M’s for that reason.
Thinking I could certainly handle it, I ignored the warnings and took a big Thermos filled with hot, unsweetened green tea to my first two or infusions. (This was back in the hard days of A/C adriamycin/cytoxan treatments.) After all, I figured, what could go wrong with green tea? I mean it’s not like it’s really a food, or has a lot of flavor to begin with, right?
Wrong.
Green tea.
Uggh.
To this day, If I so much as get a whiff of green tea I feel like throwing up. So it’s adios to one of my former favorite beverages — probably for the rest of my life.
So being mindful to The Lesson of the Green Tea, I sat patiently starving through my treatment yesterday. Then I patiently starved down the elevator and into the basement while the valet brought our car, and then patiently starved out of the building and out onto the streets of Boston.
Then I nearly jumped out of my seat. “I’m so hungry!”
My husband was starving too. So we drove down the beautiful, but jam-packed streets of springtime Boston, through Back Bay and down Boylston Street, where the cherry blossoms and northern magnolia were blooming. The girls were out in sleeveless dresses and wearing sandals for the first time all year. The streets were jammed with traffic, which made for a spectacle, but also meant there was no parking, even in the $15 pay lots.
We eventually gave up, and as my hunger reached a crescendo, we headed across the Charles River into Cambridge, where at least I know my way around. We drove past MIT (and I felt my usual anti-MIT shudder), swung into my favorite Asian market for pickled plums (I’ve bought them there for more than 15 years), and finally landed in Central Square at The Middle East for dinner.
Alas, our meal was no Back Bay extravaganza. Not only were there no spectacular gourmet tidbits, but my “seared yellow fin tuna salad” was so awful I wound up having to send it back and try again. But despite the disappointing meal, I was thrilled to be alive, to be overcoming cancer, to be with the man I love, and to know that springtime does return, no matter how long the winter.
Blessings to all.
