Archive of a Breast Cancer Survivor
01.09.05
The Injection of Chemo
This is Nurse Katie. She is a traveling nurse. She worked first in New York
City, and then Denver, Colorado. Now she is in San Diego and has decided to
stop and plant roots. She likes it here—and she was good at explaining
what would be happening. The fluid you see her injecting me with was the first
in two applications of chemotherapy named Doxorubicin. She told me my urine
would turn red, and sure enough it did. For the whole day. Later, during the
treatment my father stopped in to visit. We had this quiet private moment but
perhaps not so quiet since there were seven other people in the room. Standing
near me he said in a very quiet tone, “I like you in your cancer, you
seem so much happier. Before you were always concentrating on things that made
you depressed and sad but now you are not. You are a happier person today.” And
I wasn’t sure how to digest that comment, and I didn’t even respond
other than stutter and make a noise in my throat. In fact I am not really recalling
the response other than the shock of his statement. Is that really true? Has
cancer given me a place of reprieve? Do I have something to focus on other
than what seemed to weigh me down—moments that were nothing but weightless
issues we all seem to think are important? I guess that is the gift I received
for the day—to realize what is important in life: not the small moments
that bog us down with weighted realities, but rather the larger moments like
the gesture of your father leaning into your ear telling you how lovely you
are under the gossamer of red fluid flowing eagerly down the winding brook
of your life.