April 13 I Never Thought I Would Want Chemo

Chemo day. One month past when Dr. E. said I should do something. With a kidney creatinine number of 1.6 I could not qualify for the clinical study. I never heard of creatinine before. Instead my first chemo was a milder recipe that took only 3 hours or so to take. Here, at a clinic closer to home the décor was spartan and clinical. Windows behind the chairs, and the strange alien looking recliners, the infusion chairs lining the wall, each with it’s 6 wheeled tower of chrome and hooks and LCD’s at the ready. Facing each chair a single clinic chair. The view was a good one, looking into the nurse station and mixing room. Special deliveries came, papers delivered.
‘Mr. Courtney, follow me please. We are going to get some blood’. Small with dark hair and a fast gate she led me to an examination room for weight and blood. With cancer you get weighed a lot and you get pierced a lot, part of it. As she rummaged through her drawer carefully laying out the items she needed, needle, bottles, each bottle carefully labeled with bar code she says, ‘Can you give me your birth date?’. I snapped back in military fashion with name and birth date, and gave her a grin. Her skill with the needle was beyond compare, she carefully prepped the vein, punched the hole and secured to outlet and was filling vials all while asking me a few questions. I put her at ease, remaining relaxed, joking with the questions she asked as I told her how I got this far. Later, with Vanessa reading her book I looked over her shoulder at the nurses, each hunkered over a monitor, entering data, looking for data, assembling data while delivering extraordinary care and compassion to their clients. ‘Look’, she said, ‘he’s watching us’. She of all of them paid the closest attention, like clockwork looking away from the computer and scanning the floor caught my apparent gaze. ‘You guys are like a well oiled machine’ I responded. They all laughed and joked among themselves, for it was actually a near chaos always at the precipice job they have and I had no idea.
Yet I and they know this is a desperate life saving service being performed.