The Social Life of a Cancer Patient

No matter what was going on with my treatment, I tried to get out. I tried to have the social life of a 26/27 year old. I didn’t drink, (I am pretty sure) I looked horrible, and sometimes, I had trouble keeping up with everyone. But I needed the interaction with more than my parents and doctors. I was determined to go through all the treatments and appointments alone, but I needed something to do in my evenings to keep my mind active and keep a positive attitude.


Even though I wasn’t working I would often have lunch with my co-workers, who treated it like a party almost every time I stepped in the door. On Fridays, I would drive down there a little before noon and then wander around the office for a bit and say hi to everyone while I was waiting for lunch. It was so nice for me to go around and visit. I got hugs, and all my coworkers would talk to me about how I felt. Once in a while, one of the girls that I worked with would tell me that she knew how I felt because she had some sort of flu. We would all laugh about that later, because she really had no idea as to how I felt. 

The Fancy Lunch Crew

My co-workers were so supportive, that even when I wasn’t able to make it down there. Because of my immunities and the fear of catching a cold or something that may be circling the office, or because I was just too sick to drive, they always made sure that I knew they loved me. I would often get a card with get-well wishes, usually on days that I would need it the most. This group of people was amazing. They always just seemed to know. I would get tons of emails. I started running a trivia question of the day via email, and it was so fun to get the funny answers that I would get. It was really uplifting.

My parents threw a get well party for all my friends to attend, and I think to meet them, and know what we were dealing with. My parents fell in love with the ones who came, and I just loved them all a little more. We had a barbecue, and there were few people there, but it was so nice just to hang out with everyone in the comfort of my own home. 


Friends and I would go out, sometimes to bars. We had a favorite one downtown, right by the pier, that had a great cover band.  We would sit outside and I would laugh at them while they got drunk and acted silly. 


One of my favorite times when I went out with my friends, was when a bunch of us went out to this storefront karaoke studio in Fountain Valley (It was called Elvis!? Karaoke Studios).  I love to sing. And I love Karaoke. It had studio rooms, and you could record yourself singing. There were around 7 of us, and we went in and were told “No Drinky,” because they wanted you to buy drinks from them, and not bring in your own. To this day, it’s a huge joke with a couple of us. We were there for a couple of hours, singing away. We sang quite a mix of songs. We had a funny time, as replayed by the tape we made that night. 


My dad had known that I was having trouble with nausea, so earlier in the day, he tried an experiment. Dad made me pot brownies. I had one about a half an hour before we left to go to the karaoke place. It didn’t help much with the nausea, but it made me giggle a lot. By the time we got to karaoke, I couldn’t feel my legs, so I had to be helped. The brownie effect was referenced in several songs that we sang that night. It also loosened me up to where I was no longer shy to sing in front of other people. Apparently, I have a good voice. And judging from the conversations of the night, I was very well loved.  

My parents were really good about letting people visit, too. On chemo days, I often didn’t want to leave the house after I got home. Sometimes when I was feeling down, my parents would call or email one of my friends and they would come over in the evening and visit. My old upstairs neighbor, Dawn came over once in a while with my friend Linda. Linda would entertain me and often bring me animal books to read, while Dawn hung out and teased my dad. Kim would come over every night to give me my Neupogen shot and try to visit for a bit until her husband started thinking that she was having an affair and demanded that she come straight home after work every night. And Sweet Elizabeth who tried to bring her cute little dog, Teddy, over as often as she could. Even one of my best friends, Damon came all the way from Sacramento with his daughter and step-son. It was wonderful to meet them both, and to see him.

Damon, the kids and Me

Friends also offered to go to chemo with me. It was very nice of them, but I only allowed it twice. I always felt that if anyone was visiting or was with me, I needed to be entertaining. It was so time consuming and tiring, it was hard for me to be able to even talk for that amount of time. Elizabeth went with me to my second one, and Linda went with me to my last one. I loved that they cared enough to go with me, and that they took me out afterward, but it was so hard to remain interesting.

I met a few people in chemo that were actually my age. Rachel was a year or two older than me, I think. And Michael - the cute boy from the Gallium scan - who WAS someone I went to high school with. They ended up dating for a period of time, and we often saw each other with our corresponding check ups and chemos - mostly just in passing, but once in a while we’d talk.

On the day that it was Rachel’s last chemo, so I stopped by to celebrate with her. While she was waiting to go in, we started talking about an ER episode that was on the night before. It was one where two of the doctors were dealing with a man that was on the attack around the hospital. He ended up stabbing one of the main doctors and an intern. He killed the intern. It was a really shocking episode. While we were talking about it, Dr. Sapra peeked his head into the waiting room and just blurted out “Shit like that happens!” And then just disappeared again. We could NOT stop laughing. It was so out of character for him. I mentioned it to him and he said to me, “well, it DOES!”

I lived for all the visits, cards, nights out, lunches, dinners and humor that I got from every single person. Those people (and they know who they are) will forever live in my heart for the wonderful things that they did when I was sick. They were what kept me going. Of all the things I take from this illness, I will take their love and friendship most of all.

The First Chemo

This is my Grandma and I right before my diagnosis. And my beautiful hair.
I will post more pics of this period of time in my next entry. We can't find our USB cable right now

Before I started chemo, my office went out to a bar. I don't really remember what it was for, but it was really fun. I had made so many new friends and we just had a blast all hanging out and having a good time. I made my peace with the person that I had pissed off when I had sent out my e-vite for the party that I was supposed to have when I had surgery. Before everyone got there, I had dinner with one of my co-workers and it was really nice to have someone to talk to for a bit. We took tons of pictures and I had a ball laughing at everyone as they got more and more inebriated.

My mom decided to go with me to chemo. I was terrified. I had seen movies where people leave and immediately started vomiting, and I was scared that was going to happen to me. I had a terrible fear of throwing up, especially throwing up in public. I also was scared of needles. I couldn't imagine having an IV hooked up to me for several hours. I was also scared of the unknown – what was going to happen once the chemo started? Would I feel different, would I even notice? Would I feel it actually go in? All these questions plagued my mind.

Around 11 am, we got to the office. We sat in the waiting room for a while, again. Things seemed very disorganized and slow. It seemed like forever before we finally got to go back. The nurse weighed me, and took some blood. She led me back to the infusion room. The room itself was small. There were cabinets and a sink at one end and an exam table at the other end. In between, there were two recliners, a pink one and a black one, across from each other and a stool and a folding chair. I could see that the black recliner was the coveted one. There was a small TV/VCR by the door.

There was only one chair available, and it was the pink recliner. The rest of the chairs were taken up by people, most of them in blankets, who were in various stages of receiving their chemo. The exam table was occupied by a Vietnamese man and his daughter. I later learned that he was a single parent, receiving chemo and there was no one to take care of his daughter. Once I sat down, I was prepped for an IV line. The nurse gave me a bag of saline and it had begun. My mom had pulled in a folding chair from outside and sat down next to me. She had read somewhere that the chemo makes a bad taste in your mouth, so she had brought some hard candy with her. So we had one of those and sat back to survey our surroundings.

Dr. Sapra ran in around noon and turned the TV on to the stock channel and pushed a VHS tape in. And then he ran back out again. Soon, we noticed that my saline bag was running low. I called the nurse in. I was terribly afraid of the bag running out and then air getting into my veins. She turned the IV off and prepared another bag for me. This one was the beginning of chemo. I didn't really feel different, just a little anxious. The needle was uncomfortable and I was very careful not to move m arm. In return, my arm was very cold.

We talked a little bit to the people sitting around us. The Vietnamese man promised me that he would teach me his language. Everyone else seemed kind of out of it, or just not really wanting to talk. I started to get tired and encouraged mom to go take a walk or get something to eat. I just wanted to rest. Pretty soon, the nurse came back in and had a needle with a very large syringe attached to it. It was filled with a bright red liquid, like Cherry Kool-Aide. Slowly, she filled my line with this fluid. It was ice cold. I could feel it going in, and it wasn't very pleasant. Once she was done with that, she gave me a new bag of clear fluid. I didn't look to see what was in these bags, I just accepted it. Within a few hours, I was done. Once I was finished, I was pretty much the only person left in the room. The nurse removed my line, and gave me some basic instructions: Don't take aspirin, ibuprofen, pretty much anything without consulting Dr. Sapra first. Call if I get a fever above 99 degrees. Stuff like that. We got plenty of paperwork on the side effects and things to avoid. It was pretty scary.

We finished up with the instructions and went on our way. Mom took me to the salon to have my hair cut. The lady that was going to cut my hair was a gardening customer of my dad's. She was nice, I guess, but kind of standoffish. I had gone to school with her sons and daughter. This may have scared her a bit. We explained that I wanted to save my hair and she looked at us as if we were nuts. But, she cut my hair. Short. I looked down when she was done and saw all of my beautiful thick, long hair spread all over the floor. I guess she wasn't sure what to do with the hair that we wanted to save, so she just swept it up and put it into a bag for me to take home.

By the time we had finished that, I was famished. We went home and it was all I could do not to eat everything in the fridge. My dad laughed and decided that they put THC in my chemo. So far, I hadn't felt too different, no nausea, no pukes, nothing like that. I was hungry. That was probably all. I supposed that was a good thing. I had several calls from friends to find out how I was and how I was doing. I told them all that I was fine. I had trouble sitting still, I was very energetic and almost twitchy. I had a lot of trouble sleeping that night. My parents were surprised that my face was bright pink after I arrived home.

I tried to drink a lot of water, because I was told that it would help me flush all the drugs out of my system. It was also supposed to be the cure all for headaches. And I seemed to get a whopper of one. I don't know what I thought would happen, but I really didn't feel that different. There were some little things, the hunger, the headache, but nothing like I originally expected. That was good, right?