Nick
I started
my first course of chemo on Sunday.
“Hi, I’m Allie,
from Oncology,” said the nurse who came to hook me up. She was wearing scrubs with rainbows on them
– double rainbows all the way across the sky of her blue scrub top. I guess you have to be optimistic when you
work around cancer patients all day.
“I’m going to get you started with your chemo infusion. You have a port?”
I pulled
back the neck of my hospital gown to show her the piece of gauze taped over the
newly-implanted portacath in my chest.
It didn’t look as freaky as it had sounded; I’d seen it when the nurses
changed the bandage, and it really was just a little round lump beneath my
skin. It would never be noticeable
through my shirt, and I couldn’t even feel it unless I poked at it. Still, it was weird to think I had a piece of
metal imbedded under my skin, hooked to a plastic tube that went into one of my
veins.
“Great,”
said Allie. She pulled on a pair of
gloves and peeled off the gauze. “I’m
going to use a little betadine to sterilize the area and then put on some
anesthetic cream that will numb your skin so you don’t feel me stick you,” she
explained as she set to work. “Is this
your first time?”
“Yeah,” I
rasped; my throat had gone dry. I
cleared it and added, “I’m a chemo virgin.”
She blushed
and laughed lightly. “Well, you won’t be
when I’m done with you. I’m going to put
in a Huber needle that will hook up to the IV line,” she said, and I winced at
the thickness of the needle on the end of the yellow, plastic square she held
up for me to see. “I promise, you’ll
hardly feel it,” she added, with a reassuring smile. And amazingly, she was right! The numbing cream had worked well; it didn’t
even hurt as she slid the needle into the skin over my port.
“Wow,
you’re good,” I said, impressed, looking down.
The yellow thing was right up against the port now, and there was a bit
of plastic tubing hanging out of it. It
reminded me that chemicals were going to be flowing through that tube, straight
into my chest, and I started to get nervous again.
She hooked
the tube to an IV line that ran up to a bag of clear liquid that she hung on
the IV pole next to my bed. “Just
saline, for now,” she explained. “Your
chemo will run through this infusion pump, which I have to set to drip at the
right rate.” She gestured to a monitor
on the IV stand. “I’m also gonna give
you a dose of Zofran, which is an anti-nausea drug. If you’re lucky, it’ll keep you from getting
sick later.”
My stomach
turned over at the thought. I hated
throwing up. “How bad are the side
effects, really?” I asked.
“It varies
from person to person,” she said, as she injected a shot full of the drug into
my IV line. “They can be pretty bad, but
not always. Some people tolerate chemo
better than others. We have medications
to help with some of the symptoms, like the nausea and vomiting, but not
others. Even if you don’t feel sick,
you’ll be tired. You may lose your
appetite; sometimes people get sores in their mouth or find that things taste
funny after chemo, and that can keep them from wanting to eat, too. You’ll probably lose your hair...”
I raised a
hand to my head and smoothed down the front of my hair. I’d been keeping it pretty short, and maybe
that was just as well – it’d make it easier to adjust to having none at all. “How long does it take for that to happen?”
“Three or
four weeks. Some people lose it
sooner. I’ve seen a lot of patients just
buzz it off when it starts to fall out.”
I
nodded. That’s what I would do. I wasn’t going to go around looking worse
than AJ, with big bald spots on my head.
When Allie
had finished setting up the chemo, she said, “Okay, this is set to drip over
three hours. If you need to, you can get
out of bed and move around, use the bathroom or whatever; just make sure you
wheel your IV stand with you and watch to make sure your line doesn’t get
tangled or caught on anything. If you
start to feel sick or need anything, just use your call button. I’ll be back to check on you later.”
She left me
with the call button connected to my bed and a small basin, in case I needed to
hurl. I hoped I wouldn’t have to use
it. I lay back against my pillows and
watched the fluid flow slowly through the clear IV tubing, into my chest,
wondering how long it would take for the side effects to kick in.
I tried to
keep myself occupied while the three hours passed. I watched TV.
I played on my laptop. But
mostly, I just thought. I had a lot to
think about, a lot of decisions left to make.
I’d known about my cancer for four days, and I still hadn’t told
anyone. I was making excuses for
myself. I’ll wait till I know what chemo’s like, so I can tell them how the
treatment’s going, I thought, figuring that would be a more optimistic
conversation than just telling them I had Stage IV cancer. I didn’t want to depress anyone. I’ll
wait till I’m out of the hospital, so they don’t have to visit me here. That would buy me at least another week.
I knew I
was being stupid, not telling anyone, dealing with everything by myself. The guys and my family would want to know I
was sick, and they’d find out eventually – it wasn’t like I could keep it a
secret for long, with my hair falling out and daily trips to the hospital to
get chemo. But I wanted to delay that
moment for as long as possible. My
friends and family members were living their own lives, and they were
happy. I didn’t want to mess that up for
them by dragging them into the shit I was going through.
It was bad
enough cancer had disrupted my life. I
didn’t want it to disrupt theirs, too.
***
“Congratulations,
you’re all done!” My nurse, Thea,
unhooked the needle and tubing from my port and covered it with a band-aid.
“For now,
at least,” I replied, sitting up straight in the recliner I’d been lying in for
the past half hour. “That was really
quick.”
“I told you
it would be. The vincrinstine infusion
only takes about ten minutes, unlike the cyclophosphamide you got last week.”
It had been
over a week since the start of my chemo; I was now on Day 11 of my first
cycle. After a week of being monitored
while I got chemo as an inpatient, I’d finally been discharged from the
hospital. I was only back at the
oncology clinic as an outpatient to get my last dose of IV chemo of the
cycle. I still had a steroid to take in
pill form for three more days at home, but then I would have a week off of
medications completely before starting my next cycle.
The timing
couldn’t have worked out much better. I
had a couple days to recover before heading up to Fresno to play a club gig on
Friday, then on to Napa for another performance on Saturday and the fan event
on Sunday. I was actually looking
forward to the trip. I’d been feeling
surprisingly good – the chemo had made me tired, like everyone said it would,
but other than that, I hadn’t had many side effects. The Zofran they gave me before each round
worked on my bouts of nausea, so I wasn’t throwing up all the time, and I still
had all my hair. Granted, it was a
little early to start going bald – Allie had said it could take three weeks,
and it had only been half that.
Still, as I
left the oncology clinic, I felt pretty optimistic. It helped that it was a beautiful day in LA;
as I pulled my Benz out of the dark, underground parking deck, the sunlight was
so bright that that I immediately reached for my sunglasses. For a minute, I thought about driving over to
the beach, but decided I’d better not that day.
I guess I was still waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for
those horrible side effects I’d read about to come and get me. It’d be just my luck that I’d start
projectile vomiting on the Santa Monica Pier.
So I went straight home instead.
But once I
was home, I didn’t know what to do with myself.
It had been that way ever since I’d come home from the hospital. At first, I had been glad just to be able to veg
out in my condo and sleep in my own bed again.
But then I started getting cabin fever.
I was tired, but I didn’t want to just lie around, watching TV and
playing video games. I’d been doing that
for two weeks in the hospital. Now that
I was out, I wanted to do more. I didn’t
want to waste any time. Ironically, I
wasted plenty of it just pacing around the condo, wondering what to do.
It wasn’t
just that I was bored. I kept
remembering what Dr. Submarine had said to me:
“If you choose not to undergo
chemo, you’ll be dead in a matter of weeks.” Even though I was doing the treatment, I
couldn’t forget how serious my disease was.
I had done some research on my own online, and I’d seen the statistics. My kind of lymphoma was pretty treatable in
children, but not so much in adults. The
survival rate was only about fifty percent.
A coin flip. Heads, I’d be alive
and well in five years. Tails, I’d be in
the ground.
If I was
going to be dead in five years, I wanted to make the most of the time I had
left. I just wasn’t sure how to do that
yet.
I thought
about what other people did when they found out they were dying. They made bucket lists. They did all the things they’d always wanted
to do, but never had the chance. They
traveled around the world. They did
daredevil stuff, like skydiving and mountain-climbing. They spent time with the people they loved.
What would
be on my bucket list?
I didn’t
really know. The thing was, I’d already
done just about everything I’d ever wanted to do in my life. I had seen the world. I had tried out all kinds of crazy
things. I had nice houses and fast cars
and all the luxuries my money could afford.
There just wasn’t much I wanted to do that I hadn’t already done.
So maybe
that was it. Maybe I wanted to spend my
time doing the things I’d already done.
Doing what I’d always
done. Living my life like normal. I loved my life the way it had been before
I’d gotten cancer. If I had one last
wish, like those Make a Wish kids whose dying wish had been to meet me, mine
would probably be just to keep my life the same. To keep on touring, keep on making music,
keep on making people happy. That was
what made me happy. Why shouldn’t it be number one on my list?
***
I think that,
sub-consciously, I’d already decided not to tell the guys about my cancer. I knew they would never let me keep
performing if they knew how sick I was, and I couldn’t exactly finish the tour
without them. I needed them, and that
meant I needed to keep them in the dark.
Still, I
knew I should tell them, that it was
the right thing to do, so I thought I’d do it in Napa. It would be better to tell them all at once,
in person, I reasoned, and the wine would make it a lot easier. But as we sat around a winery down the street
from the opera house, hanging out before the show, I couldn’t bring myself to
say the words.
Everyone
was talking, laughing, tasting the wine.
It was always fun when we first got back together after a break. The time apart was good for us; everyone got
to go home and be with their families and relax, and when it was time to go
back on the road, we weren’t sick of each other anymore. Everything felt fresh and fun again.
The guys
all had stories from the three weeks we’d had off. Brian talked about spending time at home with
Leighanne and Baylee. Howie told us all
the new things James had learned to do.
AJ shared the wedding plans he and Rochelle had started making. When they asked, “So what have you been up
to, Nick?” I had my opening. But what
was I supposed to say?
“Oh, not much, just doing chemo for this cancer I found out
I’ve got. There’s only a fifty-percent
chance it’ll work, but if I don’t give it a shot, I won’t live to see summer,
so I figured, eh, why not?”
I couldn’t
say that. Instead, I said, “Not
much. You know – just been hangin’
out.” It wasn’t a lie; I just left out
the part where I’d been hanging out in the hospital. I’d tell them after the show, I thought. It would be better that way. If they found out beforehand, they’d be
preoccupied, and the performance would suffer.
It wouldn’t be fair to the fans to tell them now and ruin the night when
I could just wait and do it later.
Our show
that night was more like a long soundcheck than an actual concert. We performed just ten songs that the fans had
helped choose, accompanied only by an acoustic guitar, and answered questions
between songs. I didn’t enjoy talking as
much as I did just sitting on a stool, singing.
It was easy to forget what was going on inside me when I could lose
myself in the music and sing my heart out, and even though I was tired, I was
disappointed when it was over.
We did the
obligatory meet-and-greet after the show.
Once the last few fans had been escorted out, I turned to the other
guys. “Wanna head to a bar or
something?” I asked. I figured I needed
some more booze before I could break my bad news to them, and it would be good
to kick back with a beer after all the froofy wine I’d had that afternoon.
Brian
bailed on me first. “I think all that
wine earlier was enough, buddy,” he laughed.
“Besides, we’re gonna head back to LA first thing tomorrow morning, so I
should probably get Baylee to bed.”
“Yeah,”
Howie agreed, “I wanna go back to the hotel and check on James. Another time, man.” I was disappointed in him; Howie never used
to say no to a night out on the town, but that was before he went and got all
“family man” on me.
“I think
Monkee and me are just gonna head back to the hotel too,” said AJ, slinging his
arm around Rochelle. They were so in
love, it was sickening; I didn’t want to think about what went on behind the
closed door of their hotel room. He must
have seen the look on my face, because he added, “We still cool?”
“We’re
cool,” I muttered back. “I just kinda
wanted to tell you guys somethin’…”
“You can
tell us now,” said Howie. “What’s up,
Nicky?”
Usually I
hated when he called me that, like I was still the twelve-year-old I’d been
when he’d met me (and even then, I hadn’t gone by Nicky), but in that instant, I felt my throat close up with a
different kind of emotion. Howie loved
me like a little brother, the same way he’d always been a big brother to
me. He had been protective of me from
the beginning, but ever since Kevin had left, he had really taken on the
leadership role, watching out for the rest of us and keeping me and AJ in
line. I looked at him then and wanted to
protect him, too. I didn’t want to tell
him something that was going to devastate him.
“Spit it out,
Carter,” growled AJ, when I didn’t answer right away, and Rochelle
giggled. Only Brian, I noticed, said
nothing. He was just staring at me, his
eyes narrowed slightly, as if he could tell I wasn’t acting quite like my usual
self.
I really
had meant to tell them. But instead, I
put on a big grin and avoided Brian’s eyes as I said, “It’s nothin’. Just wanted to tell you I had fun this
weekend. I can’t wait till we’re back on
tour.”
***