Pets and paradise

Last fortnights chemo # 5 was fucked.

Chemo was long, hurtful, boring, nauseating, confusing and ultimately left me with a burnt vein and a state of delirium. My body has begun to realise that chemo is not its friend. It is slowly rejecting the poison traveling through its transport system. The veins are for blood vessels full of oxygen and white blood cells, vitamins and life, no place for the thick acidic poison that burns the sides and scrapes the bottom. My veins raise to the surface in protestation and chemo must be halted, saline is then flushed through the veins as some kind of compensation to keep them quiet for a few more IV bags. Then it happens again, this time pain accompanies the visible presence of the inflamed veins, heat packs are placed strategically to try and once again cox the veins into submission, lull them into a false sense of acceptability.

The pert blonde intern came up to me during this slow and torturous process.

"I can go find out your PET results Joh if you would like"
"ummm sure"

The Pet scan is the ultimate scan for cancer patients it is the big entrance exam into a new staging or ultimately diagnosis of cancer. The "Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scan is a nuclear medicine imaging technique which produces a three-dimensional image or map of functional processes in the body." Thankyou wikipedia. In other terms it highlights every cancerous cell in the body.

I had gone for my scan the week before with Steph. Appointment was at 8am. Once again I had radioactive sugars dripped into my 'not as sore' arm and got to watch the first half of another dreary American comedy. The scan is much less intrusive then an MRI or a CT scan involving the dye's.

The blonde intern returned and just spat it out
'There is no signs of cancer in your body'
'really?' I managed a look of increased excitement through my crippling chemo experience
'the PET scan is completely clear' she stumbled in delivery as her smile was in the way of the words. It must be such a relief disclosing this news to cancer patients in comparison to the hundreds of times you must utter the word 'there has been no change' or 'the cancer has now spread to other organs' or 'it seems that cancer is terminal, you have three weeks to live'.

With this news I felt invincible, strong, empowered, in control and felt the duality of holding a degree of gratitude to the same poison that was making me feel so dam lousy.

A few days later Stew and myself were once again waiting in the cancer clinic to talk to Dr. George about the PET results. Kerry Ann was on the TV and the clinic was bursting at the seems with patients and their cancers.

Anup congratulated me on the news of the cancer and then launched into the fact that this didn't mean I didn't have to complete my full cycle of chemo. He reckoned I would have 5 more chemo's and a possible course of radiation therapy. The previous PET result buzz began to dissipate. 5 more chemos.........fuck.......radiation therapy.........fuck

I left feeling disheartened and ultimately pissed off. If the scan was clear could we not just pop a bottle of non-alcoholic champagne at grandma's and enjoy the floral arrangements from the extended family and a celebratory toast to being cancer free and get on with living. Chemo was an insurance policy to reduce the chance of 'relapse'. There is still a chance there is microscopic cancer cells that are more resilient to the chemo, if left untreated they will rapidly reproduce, recolonise and led me back to the dance with cancer.

5 to go and count down.........