I got a call from my dear friend from the cancer hospital, the one I call Fran--the same one who helped me understand how important it is to strip away all the bullsh*t. I haven’t seen her since the day before her radiation treatment ended because I was late. I missed seeing her ring the bell when she was done. I still feel like crap about missing that milestone in her journey.
Let me be clear--ringing that bell at the end of radiation treatment is a BIG deal. It signifies that you have endured 33 to 36 individual radiation treatments. It means that you have hauled your ass into the hospital for up to 36 days in a row (excluding weekends), including driving across town, weaving your way through a busy college campus, winding your way up to the section of the third floor of the parking garage reserved especially for radiation patients, walking across the hospital and down to the basement (a.k.a. dungeon), checking in and getting your parking pass, changing into the infamous drab, gray gown and waiting, waiting, waiting for your turn to get nuked.
When you finally climb into the machine and bare your chest while up to 10 people adjust you and mill about the room around you, you try to go away and not think about what’s happening to your body. You vacate the premises. The machine whirls around you, buzzing and zapping its toxins into your body while you hope and pray it’s doing its job but not giving you a drop more radiation than absolutely necessary.
And then there are the side effects of treatments that you deal with. Skin rashes and burning, peeling, tenderness, and general discomfort around the area. There’s the extreme fatigue, which is different from anything you’ve ever experienced. The kind that isn’t aided by sleep. The kind that suppresses your whole system to the point that it feels like there’s a veil between you and the world, but you don’t really realize it until the veil lifts about a month after treatment.
And the emotional toll. You wonder what treatment is going to be like, if you’re going to be able to get through it. Of course you can--you can get through anything--but at the outset, you don’t know this yet, so there’s a lot of fear. Fear of suffering. Fear of discomfort. Fear of death. Fear that the treatment won’t work and you’ll be back where you started. Fear of not holding up your end of the human bargain--whether that means making a contribution to society or doing your family’s laundry. You experience other feelings too--the whole emotional gamut--and without your normal faculties, everything seems bigger and worse than usual. Once you get a taste of what the treatment will be like, you start holding onto your precious energy for dear life, until you realize that the holding takes too much energy. So you let go and let the radiation have its way with you.
When I missed Fran’s bell-ringing, it would be an understatement to say I was disappointed that I didn’t witness my friend as she finished this experience. For her it was even bigger because she had also gone through chemo. She had been working her way through cancer treatment for almost an entire year. And she rocked it. She finished with flying colors. I’m so proud of her.
Fran (you know who you are), I’m so sorry I wasn’t there.
So back to the phone call. She called me the other day and told me on my voice mail that I never mentioned in this blog that I had rung the bell.
Huh, go figure. Because it was a big deal for me too. A really big deal. I did, in fact, ring the bell at around 10:30am on Tuesday, August 16. My husband, parents, sister and brother-in-law and another friend who had been through it before were all there to support me, as they had through the whole experience.
I made it all the way through cancer treatment. I rang the bell. I finished an experience that changed me from the inside out. I have learned so much from the whole thing, it’s hard to even describe. I’m so grateful for that.
But I’m still really, really glad it’s over.
Fran, this post is for you. Congratulations on finishing treatment, and I hope you are doing well now. I don’t have your number (it showed up as unknown on my phone), so please call me back and let me know how to get in touch with you. I have often wanted to talk to you and see how you are doing, so I was thrilled to get your phone call. I look forward to hearing from you again.
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