Trey R. Barker – Official Website and Blog

Cancer Chronicles, Pt 11: The End of the Beginning

January 2, 2006 – 1:22 pm | by Trey

Friday was my birthday.

Friday was also the last day of daily Interferon treatments.

Not quite the birthday I had planned but given the context, not bad at all. Hey, no more going to the hospital every day, no more getting stabbed (my hands look like friggin’ pin cushions from all the IVs), no more of the one nurse’s perfume.

No more of any of that crap.

I consider this the end of the first part of all this bullshit; of initial tests and surgery and what a writer friend of mine called Interferon Boot Camp, and all the rest of the bullshit that goes with being a stage 3 cancer survivor (and how odd is it to think that about yourself?).

Now we move on to the thrice weekly injections (from now until December, 2006) and I have no idea what that means. Will I be as tired, sleeping 15 hours a day? Will I be able to eat anything? Will I be as cranky and pissed as I have been?

It’s the same medicine but only three times a week rather than five, and a smaller dosage. I suspect I’ll begin to feel somewhat normal again.

On the other hand, even today (Monday, four days since my last treatment) lunch still tasted like crap. Of course, it was week old Hamburger Helper so maybe that had more to do with the food than the medicine.

It is entirely possible I’ll have all the same side effects for the next year. It’s possible they’ll be less than they are now, but it’s also possible they’ll be just as bad.

Yeah, can you see me at the jail, feeling tired and hardly able to walk, just as a drunk who likes to fight gets arrested? “Uh, excuse me, sir, I’m kind of tired, can you wait to fight until the next shift? I’d appreciate it.”

I don’t think it’ll be that bad. I think I’ll feel much closer to my old cynical self than I do now…though I suspect it’ll be next Christmas before I feel completely normal.

Here’s an odd tidbit about the injections. It might be more expensive to do it myself. Yeah, welcome to modern American insurance bullshit. More expensive to do it at home than it would be to go do it at the hospital, where I’d have to take up a nurse’s time, use an ambulatory services room, labs and registration, all the rest of it.

WTF? And insurance companies wonder why people hate them.

Last week, the oncology nurse began working on how I’d get the injections. We don’t know yet because the insurance company hasn’t returned any calls. In other words, yeah, they’ll take my money every month but won’t pick up a damned phone.

In the middle of everything I’ve been through in the last six weeks, here is the thought that makes me the craziest: I’ll never know if the treatment worked.

Thousands and thousands of dollars and it’s basically to prove a negative. Regardless of the treatment, the cancer might come back (do I get my money back if that happens?). Or it might never come back because the surgery got it all. I have no idea.

I want to say — as publicly as I can — thanks to two writers who have been absolutely incredible during the last six weeks. You’ve heard of both of them and you’ve read their books and stories, and both of them are either currently fighting cancer or are currently in remission. Without them, I’m not sure I could have done as well as I have. I realized in the last few days how much I love both of them…for things I’ll probably never be able to tell them.

(Hah, how funny is this? Isreal Kamakawewo’ole’s version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” is playing right now on the bookstore stereo.)