I'll Get You My Pretty...

After a review of all the tests, my neurologist informed me that not only was the tumor still there, there were now traces of it in my spinal fluid. That meant chemo. Next stop was a trip to see a very wicked witch who lived in the top of a tower, surrounded by a gaggle of inept harpies. (I'm not sure what you call a bunch of harpies so we'll just go with "gaggle" for now.)

I got there and did the usual -- name, birthday, filling out form after form. Did I have surgery? When? Did I have a family history of a thousand different illnesses? Did I have a pacemaker? Did I have change for a twenty? And so on. One would think that hospitals would share this information and keep it in a database, but one would be wrong. I answered this stuff every time I saw a new doctor.

I got ushered into a waiting room. In came two nurses. One old, one young, both stupid. The twentysomething kicked things off with "why are you here?" followed up with "have you seen a doctor?" and "are you allergic to penicillin?" I had already answered these and many, many more questions on the forms she was holding in her hand. After what seemed like an eternity, they left and another nurse came in. A black lady. Turned out Black Lady was the only empathetic, competent one in the office -- she would go on to interpret the strange questions and odd behavior for the rest of our visit. "She's new," Black Lady said of the young nurse. "No shit," I answered. Normally I have more patience for this kind of thing. We're all new at some point. But I don't think that Rare Brain Tumor is the time to let the newbie get her sea legs.

The best was yet to come. Finally, in strode The Wicked Bitch of the Midwest, my oncologist-to-be. A thin woman in her early sixties with the bedside manner of Joseph Mengele, she got right to the point, going over what I had and letting me know why chemo was the way to go. Like many evildoers, at first she made sense. Having endured the idiocy that had been displayed up to this point, my wife and let out a sigh of relief.

Then it got weird. She didn't ask me how I felt about things, if I had questions or how comfortable I was about the proposed treatment, the details of which we had yet to hear. Up to this point, all of my doctors had treated me as if I had a voice in my treatment; that I was part of the team. Not her. As far as she was concerned, it was all predetermined. We were just nailing down the details at this point. She acted as if someone had already explained all of this -- the logistics of treatment, possible side effects, what to expect, etc. -- prior to our visit.

She'd go in and out of the room for unexplained reasons -- presumably to look things up? Black Lady would come in intermittently to reassure us. The topper was when The Wicked Witch popped her head in and said, "oh, there's a good chance you'll end up sterile, so you might want to bank some sperm." How's that for an off-the-cuff remark?

My wife and I looked at each other with a mix of fear, anger and disbelief. What. The. Fuck?

The Wicked Witch came back and ran down the course of treatment, casually rattling off the chemo drugs they'd be pumping into me. Black Lady then took us on a tour of the facility where I'd be spending my time. A lot of time. At least three hours a day, every day, for weeks. I'd get weekends off, of course. It was an empty room of old-looking pink recliners lined up in a row, with the windows behind them. There were two TVs mounted on the wall at either end of the room. "Depressing" doesn't come close.

Next step for me was to get a port, a little device they implant in your chest that's continually hooked up to a vein. It makes it easier to get chemo and other treatments intravenously. They just attach the IV and away you go, just like gassing up the car. They'd already made an appointment for me.

Holy shit.