The $48,000 Chemo Chair

"I love this chair!" The man in the neighboring chemo pen was talking to the nurse. "Supports my back.  Never gets sore.  I could sit here forever! I looked it up on Google.  It costs $48,000.  You better keep an eye on it.  I may take it on my last day."

Not exactly like the one I had but close enough. 

My own chair had cheap looking upholstery--plastic with shiny metallic threads--and was as rigid as stone, which I tried to soften up with a couple of pillows.  The hard composite arms were too narrow to rest an elbow on, and only one knob that tipped the back was available for any adjustment. In other words, I was sitting in an airline seat, only a little wider. The curtain was drawn between my neighbor and me so I couldn't see his extraordinary chair.  I very briefly nurtured a scheme of coming in early and nabbing it before this guy did and then remembered that my own stay in the chemo playground would only occur on two days – this one, my first treatment day, and one more five weeks later.

Two months ago, after many weeks of annoying symptoms that I assumed were from my hemorrhoids, I finally decided to see a surgeon to get rid of them.  After the examination, he said.  "You don't have hemorrhoids.  You have anal cancer."  That's when the brain stopped peacefully yattering. It became a nothing. A blank. He followed quickly with, "The treatment is tough, but it's very curable." The mind edged up again, and continued processing.

Anal cancer.  WTF.  Regardless of its position, it isn't the same as its colon and rectal cancer neighbors. It's pretty rare and occurs mostly in people with HIV and women over 60 (that would be me), with most cases caused by the human papillomavirus, or HPV (also me). The virus is mostly famous for causing cervical cancer, but it also triggers my very own anal and many oral cancers. (Parents of teeners – get your kids vaccinated!) HPV is usually sexually transmitted, and I had, indeed, been a lively young woman, but now I'm 75 with decades of virtue behind me. Obviously the HPV had been skulking about until my aging immune system wore down so it could leap through to bill me for the wages of my sin.

Well, this might be it, but although leaving three quarters of a century of life is not tragic or even particularly scary, the urge to continue is stupidly stubborn.  So with a certain amount of liberal guilt, I am adding to the costs of our exorbitantly expensive health care system and throwing my body into its slurry of chemical and technologic treatments.

Now, before the 1970s people with anal cancer were surgically mauled and then usually died miserably.  Then Norman Nigro, whom no one has heard of but who deserves some minor variant of Nobel prize, developed a treatment protocol that avoided surgery and cured most patients.  And the Nigro protocol, is it's called, is still used: 60 Gy of radiation every weekday over a five week period, with continuous administration of the chemotherapies fluorouracil (5-FU) for the first and last 5 days and mitomycin, which is administered on the first day of each chemotherapy treatment. According to my radiologist, the tumors "just melt."

So I'm on day 5. I've had five rounds of radiation that haven't done anything special yet.  But, every week day over the next six weeks, Michael will drive me for the hour commute between Hudson and Albany to receive a ten minute radiation zap. Over time, the radiation will accumulate, and with 2 degree burns to the nether region, become nasty. Take it as it comes.

The chemo side effects supposedly aren't as bad.  On Monday, the nurse administered the mytomycin (which is purple) into my chemo port through an enormous syringe.  (The port had been surgically placed last week during a pain-free procedure--thank you Fentanyl-- when, fully alert and from under a sheet covering me from head to toe, I passionately argued with the team in support of the first Blade Runner movie and for a nuanced approach to the #metoo movement.) After the mytomycin, another nurse used the port to umbilically tether me day and night to a 10-pound case filled with a container of 5-FU and a large battery. I lug it around as a shoulder bag during the day and put it next to me in bed at night. Every few minutes it whirs like a rewound tape while pumping its poison into my veins, which at night feels like I'm cuddling up to a dysfunctional Sony Walkman, circa 1979. To keep clean, I can only sponge – no bath or shower. Today, the visiting nurse will come to our house and take it away, giving me a three-week reprieve until she comes again to hook me up for its final five days.

 I'll only have to go to the chemo room once more for the mitomycin plunger, during which I will sit for the second and final time in an airline seat – even if my neighbor's has become available.  This is because, as he left on my first day and passed my station, I commented on his good fortune.  "I really envy you. Your chair sounded fabulous." He frowned and looked puzzled, "But you have the same one."  

Note: I Googled chemo chairs and found the article he probably had referred to, which did say that our chair cost $48.000, but it was for 13 of them.  So each one was around $3700.  After digging further, I couldn't find any similar chemo chair that cost more than $3000, and most were on sale for half price.