Archive of a Breast Cancer Survivor
02.26.05
How The Media Informs Us....
Hello. I aplogogize for my absence.
I’ve been exhausted, too exhausted
to write or want to write about being exhausted. And it’s boring as
well, to write about feeling exhausted from the chemo schedule. So I haven’t.
But there is good news: the chemo doctor (I call her McArthur Parker) has
been giving me Procrit shots once a week and that is helping a lot with my
exhaustion and my low red blood cell count. It’s been low. Last week
when I went in for the last of the bad chemo application, there was a sweet
80-something year-old woman in a wheel chair, her 50-something son holding
her hand tenderly. He asked the nurses about his mother’s red-blood
cell count and her next Procrit shot. The nurse called out her numbers, and
wouldn’t you know her numbers were higher than mine! This wheelchair-bound
woman and her numbers are higher? What’s this all about? I must be
hanging on the edge with completely unacceptable numbers.
Do you recognize the photo? That’s the woman from the Procrit commercial. She has cancer and she’s too tired to work but because of Procrit she can return to her job and protect the children at the crosswalk. The children’s angel has returned. There’s something sad and sickening that our society is learning about drugs and their function through pharmaceutical companies and their commercials. That’s how I learned of Procrit - through this ridiculous commercial. And I knew enough to ask about it because of the commercial but I was told the use of the drug was for advanced cases. So there you have it: I’m an advanced case. My red cell count is so low I’m an advanced case. Hey, what can i say? It is what is it. And so I continue on.