Nick
“T-minus seven, before my system shuts down… matter fact, I
think I’m ‘bout to shut it down right now…” I sang to myself,
as I watched the chemo slowly drip into the IV line that connected to my
port. It was about as exciting as
watching paint dry, or daytime television.
I’d given
up on flipping through the channels and handed the remote to Cary, who had
turned on one of those baby shows on TLC.
She looked over at me and giggled when she realized what I was
singing. “You skipped my favorite part!”
“What’s
that?”
“Bang, bang, choo-choo train, baby put that thing on me…” she sang,
grinning.
“Girl, I
know you ain’t makin’ fun of our lyrics…”
“Of course
not,” she insisted sweetly. “They’re,
um… catchy!”
I stuck my
tongue out at her.
“You must
be feeling okay if you’re still up to singing and making faces at me,” she
added.
I
shrugged. It was still early.
We’d made it
to the hospital on time, thanks to Cary hurrying my ass along, and I was
admitted to the hematology unit on the sixth floor. The day had started with a blood draw to
check my counts before chemo, and once the labwork came back, they hooked me up
with that.
Today’s
cocktail was laced with a drug I hadn’t had before, something called
busulfan. “This one’s a classic,” said
the nurse who set up my IV. “It’s been
used to treat cancer since the ‘fifties.”
I wasn’t interested in a history lesson.
I didn’t really want to hear the list of side effects for it, either,
but I guess it was her job to tell me before I gave my consent. Seizures were one of the biggies with this
one, so before I could get the chemo, I had to take a pill that was supposed to
prevent those. I took one for nausea,
too, just in case.
You know
it’s bad when you need drugs to treat all the problems caused by the drugs that
are supposed to treat your cancer.
Sometimes I wondered if I’d be better off not taking anything. The whole hippie, holistic route looked
pretty tempting right about then. But I
gave my consent and put my trust in modern medicine instead. As much as it scared me, I was too afraid not
to.
And hey, I
gotta hand it to modern medicine – the anti-seizure drug worked. I got through the first dose of chemo without
any twitching. I wish I could say the
same for the anti-nausea stuff, but just the smell of the lunch tray they
brought me at noon was enough to turn my stomach. I spent a good chunk of the afternoon
throwing up, or trying not to. Needless
to say, I didn’t eat my lunch.
At four
o’clock, when the Ellen show came on,
my nurse was back to start my second batch of chemo. She looked at me in surprise when she
overhead Ellen saying, “… and if you’re a Backstreet Boys fan, you won’t want
to miss my exclusive interview with Nick Carter, in which he opens up about the
reason for the recent cancellation of their summer tour.”
“Yep,” I
said flatly, “that’s me, and this is the reason.” I flicked the piece of tubing she had just
plugged into my port.
She smiled,
even though I wasn’t really trying to be funny.
“I’m sure you’ll be back to touring in no time, once those stem cells
work their magic.”
I rolled my
eyes at her back when she walked away.
They had told me it would take around a hundred days for my immune
system to completely recover from this, which meant I wouldn’t be touring again
for a long time. Not until after the new
year. The cruise was out, too, though we
hadn’t made any announcements about that yet.
There’d been plenty of speculation, though, after the tour was
postponed. The fans were freaking out,
and I couldn’t blame them. I wished I
hadn’t promised Ellen the exclusive interview, so I could have given them an
explanation sooner, but at this point, it didn’t matter. Within the hour, the news would be out, and
the secret I’d carried around for so long would be shared with the world. I just had to sit back and watch the fallout
from the confines of my hospital bed.
It was
weird watching myself on TV. The
interview had gone by in a blur, and I’d sort of blocked out most of the
details, but I did remember being nervous, like I could shit my pants any
second. So I was amazed at how calm and
composed I seemed in front of the camera.
The stylists on Ellen’s show had worked their magic to make me look
healthy, even as I announced that I wasn’t.
I looked like I was ready for a photo shoot, not a stem-cell transplant,
with my hair styled and my face all bronzed.
I hardly recognized myself. Who
was that guy? That couldn’t be me.
“…So the
official name for what you have is Pre-cursor
T-Cell Lymph-o-blastic Lymphoma?” Ellen was asking, making a big production
out of squinting at her notes on the card in her hand and struggling to sound
out the complicated medical terms.
“That’s quite a mouthful. There’s
not, like, an easy acronym for that, is there?”
The guy she
was interviewing chuckled nervously and rubbed his mouth. Now that looked more like me. “Not that I know of, no.”
“Well,
there should be. What would it be?” She looked down at the card again. “P.T.L.L.?
Ptll…” she mumbled, stringing all the letters together. “Sounds like ‘piddle.’ So, Nick, you’ve been diagnosed with Piddle?”
I laughed
again, both onscreen and in real life.
“Um, yeah, I was diagnosed this past spring.”
“And what
can you tell us about that? How did you
find out?”
“Well, um…
I started noticing some symptoms when we were touring overseas – fevers, a
nagging cough, some shortness of breath, some chest pain. I was worried, ‘cause I was diagnosed with
cardiomyopathy a couple of years ago, so I went and saw my cardiologist as soon
as we got back to the States. He said my
heart was fine, but noticed a weird mass on the X-rays, so he sent me to a
different specialist, who made the diagnosis.”
“And that
was in March?” Ellen asked, and I nodded.
“So I’m sure your fans are wondering, why did you wait so long to
announce this? I mean, people may not
know this, but you were out on the road with the Backstreet Boys, touring,
working, for the first half of the summer… all while going through cancer
treatments behind the scenes, am I right?”
“That’s
right.”
“So… what
made you decide to keep it a secret and keep working, and why are you finally
coming clean and postponing the rest of the tour dates now?”
On TV, I
cleared my throat and wiped my mouth again, shifting my weight in my
chair. “Well, honestly, I kept it a
secret so that I could keep
working. I didn’t want to let it affect my
whole life and ruin the plans we as a group had made, so I thought I could just
tough it out and finish the tour. You
know, I’ve been performing professionally since the age of, like, thirteen, so
I’m used to going onstage even when I’m under the weather. I just got my treatments on the road, in
between shows, and did the best I could to keep up with our schedule.”
“Which is
probably pretty grueling, right? I’m
sure that wasn’t easy.”
I shook my
head, chuckling again. “No. Definitely not.”
“And what
kind of treatments are we talking?
Chemotherapy?”
“Yeah,
chemo. I did six cycles of that, and I
just went through a bunch of tests and scans a few weeks ago to see how the
cancer responded, and it was successful, so I’m in remission now.”
“That’s terrific
news. And you look great, by the
way. This is your real hair?” Ellen
asked, reaching out to touch my head.
I laughed,
ducking my head to let her feel. “Yeah,
yeah… I’ve been lucky so far; it hasn’t fallen out.”
“I’m sure
your adoring fans are grateful for that.
Did you have other side effects, though, from the chemo?”
“Oh yeah…
definitely. It was pretty rough.” In the interview, I hadn’t elaborated much,
but now I thought back to the mouth sores and diarrhea and constant fatigue,
all the fun side effects I had to look forward to again. I’d been nauseous all afternoon, and they had
warned me that my hair would probably fall out this time around. I hadn’t bothered to ask Cary for ice; it
wasn’t worth it. If I went bald at this
point, oh well. I had nothing to hide
anymore.
“I’m sure,”
Ellen sympathized. “And even though your
disease is in remission, you’re not completely done with treatment, correct?”
“Right. I have what’s called a high-grade lymphoma,”
I explained, sounding a lot like I actually knew what I was talking about,
“which means it’s pretty aggressive and could still relapse and start spreading
again, so I’m going to have a stem cell transplant, which will hopefully
prevent it from coming back and possibly even cure me. So I’m making arrangements for that right
now, and that’s really why we made the decision to postpone the rest of the
summer tour dates, so I could get started with that process and get it over
with.”
“And what
kind of timeframe are you looking at with that?
That’s a pretty intense ordeal, isn’t it, a stem cell transplant?”
“Yeah,
unfortunately.” I laughed again – I
guess I did that a lot when I was nervous, though Ellen made it easy. “Yeah, I’ll probably be in the hospital for a
few weeks at the end of August or September for that, and then I’ll finish
recovering at home. Hopefully, if all
goes as planned, we’ll be able to reschedule those tour dates early next year,
but it’s too soon to know for sure right now.”
“Absolutely,
and I’m sure your fans understand and just want you to focus on your health, at
this point. You’re going to have a lot
of people around the world praying for you and wishing you well, and of course,
we here on the show wish you the best, too.”
Ellen was starting to wrap up the interview. “Nick, thank you so much for taking the time
to talk about this,” she said, reaching out to shake my hand. “Good luck with your recovery, and please,
keep us posted on how it’s going.”
“Going just
swell,” I muttered, looking down at the tube coming out of my chest and the
puke basin in my lap.
On TV, the
camera had cut back to Ellen in her studio.
“That interview was taped back in August, about a month ago, when our
show was on hiatus for the summer. We
checked in with Nick’s people just this morning, and they confirmed that he is
in the hospital right now, getting ready for his stem cell transplant, so we
wish him the best with that. Nick, if
you’re watching, we’re all anxious to check in with you and see how you’re
doing, so if you’re up for calling in or doing a satellite interview from your
hospital room, we’d love to have you.
After the break, we’ll be back with more special guests and surprises –
the good kind, people, I promise, no more bad news – as our VMA wrap-up
continues. Stay tuned!”
As the show
went to commercials, I looked over at Cary.
She gave me a grim smile, her lips pressed tight together. “Well…” she offered.
I
sighed. “Shit’s probably hitting the fan
right about now. Dare me to check my
Twitter?”
She
giggled, her smile breaking open. “Could
be pretty scary. I bet you’ve got
thousands of tweets coming your way already.”
“Yeah… the
fans are gonna be flippin’ out.”
“But only
because they care about you. You’re
going to get all kinds of well wishes and prayers and encouraging thoughts… You
really should try to read some of them.”
I have to
admit, I was curious. I logged onto
Twitter on my iPhone and clicked into my @replies. There were always way too many of them to
actually keep up with, but that day, it was insane. I hadn’t even read one of them when a message
appeared at the top of the screen to tell me I already had a hundred more new
tweets. It would be impossible to read
all of them, but I did scroll through a few pages of them. Cary was right; most of them were encouraging
messages.
DelphinaCarter @nickcarter Nick I saw the Ellen
interview and think you are a strong person to make it this far, it had me in
tears. I'm rooting for you to make it :)
MusicAddict90 @nickcarter Nick, we all love you and
support you through this horrible trial that you are facing right now. All of
us fans are praying for you.
Their
heartfelt words made me smile. A few of
them even made me laugh.
LenniluvsBrian @nickcarter Nick you've GOT be get
well again & be A-Ok!!! Or I'M going after your cancer with my pointy
sticks & eliminator ray gun!!! GET WELL!!!!!
ForeverRebel @nickcarter Nick, you're so DRATW, I
can't believe this is true...ohhh my god...so intense. Please don't die &
become a Zombie Double Rainbow!
Then, of
course, there were the overemotional fans who tweeted me in all caps and broken
English, who I imagined sobbing over their keyboards, screaming at me to feel
better through their computer screens. And
then there were the ones who were so desperate, they would even use my illness
as a way to get close to me.
KujoBites @nickcarter You should hire someone (me) to document your
experience for the fans. I'm a professional photographer, journalist & web
designer. Pick me!
I rolled my
eyes and showed Cary. She smirked and
shook her head. “I’m glad you didn’t
reveal that you basically hired me to be with you on the road, or I’d probably
have hate tweets coming my way from people like that right about.”
“Aww… you
sayin’ chicks will still fight over a dude with cancer?”
“You bet
they will, when that dude is Nick Carter.”
“Even when
I got tubes hangin’ out of me and a puke bucket ready to fill up?” I asked,
waving the (empty) basin.
“Even
then,” she said, smiling, and leaned in to kiss me.
It was a
nice gesture, but it would have been a lot nicer if the smell of her cherry
Chapstick hadn’t made my queasy stomach start churning again. All of a sudden, I felt the horrible, burning
sensation of vomit rolling up my throat, and in desperation, I pushed her out
of the way and brought the puke basin up under my chin, just in time.
“Oh no,” I
heard Cary say, but she was right there in an instant, rubbing my back as I
leaned over and threw up. There was
really nothing in my stomach left to barf up, at that point, so it was mostly
just thick, slimy strings of drool and stomach acid. Still, I dry-heaved for a few more minutes,
until the urge finally passed. Then I
slumped back against my pillows, feeling exhausted and embarrassed.
“Sorry
‘bout that,” I mumbled to Cary, who was already at the sink, rinsing out the
basin. I felt terrible for hurling after
she’d kissed me. What was she supposed
to think?
“No, I’m sorry,” she apologized quickly,
turning around. When she brought the
basin back, I saw that her cheeks were bright red. She looked equally horrified. “I shouldn’t have done that. Are you feeling better?”
No, I thought. My stomach
hurt, and my throat burned, and I felt shaky and weak, like I had the flu. But I lied and said, “Yeah, thanks. And don’t be sorry; it ain’t your fault.”
She seemed
to accept that, settling back into her chair next to my bed, and we didn’t
speak of it again. But I don’t think she
ever wore that flavor of Chapstick again, either.
***