The Push

           The decision to return to Auburn before my chemo treatments were completed was not one I made lightly. I knew from the very beginning that any number of things could go wrong from me simply not feeling well enough to do well in my classes to getting seriously sick over 300 miles away from the doctors attuned to the details of my condition. There is often a fine line between moving forward with a reasonable sense of confidence and just being flat out stupid, and I wanted to make sure I was not crossing that line. After many conversations with my doctor, however, it was clear that there were certainly risks involved, but not to the point that it would be considered a complete abandonment from my senses to go back. Knowing that, I felt good about getting my toes back in the water and making the first steps towards becoming a real-life functioning person again. I hadn’t considered how hard leaving home would be until I was loading the last of my things into the back of my car in the driveway. The last few months had been nothing short of a reliving of my pre-college life of living at home and completely relying on my parents to take care of me, perhaps even more profoundly than before. And now it was like I was leaving home for the first time all over again. I had to remind both myself and my parents that I would be returning every two weeks for the next month and a half anyway, so I think that at least helped soften the transition.

            The person who opened the door to my Auburn duplex five hours later was not the same person who had walked out four and a half months earlier. Somehow the rooms felt more open, the air seemed easier to breathe, and the insidious itching that had seemed to inhabit every nook and corner of the place had vacated the premises. When I lay in bed that night, the same bed I had spent countless sleepless nights, the profound beauty of what it is to be able to simply rest and feel a set of soft sheets beneath my fingers without feeling like I was lying on a nest of angry ants washed over me. Sometimes it’s only on the other side of something horrible that we can truly and profoundly appreciate the little pleasures of life, but the hard-earned lessons are ones we don’t soon forget.

One of the stipulations that my doctor and I had agreed upon before deciding I would return to school was that I would wear a mask to my larger classes in order to avoid at all costs getting sick while my immune system was in such a sorry state. Part of me wondered if anyone would recognize me between my lack of hair and surgical mask which covered my lower face. I’m not usually one to be overly-concerned with my appearance, but when the time came to actually walk into my first class, anxiety bloomed inside me like an unwanted weed. Not only did my inner middle schooler continually whisper that everyone was looking at me, I suddenly had the irrational fear that the professor would ask me to stand up and explain to the class why I felt compelled to wear a mask. Would people not want to sit next to me? Would they think I have some infectious disease? Despite myself, I had a flashback to the first day I walked into the cancer ward at Vanderbilt to begin my treatment. I remember seeing person after person wearing a mask and unconsciously feeling like I shouldn’t sit right next to them, almost as if they were really wearing a sign that read “Stay back.” Now, I felt like I was wearing the same sign.

Thankfully, reality proved much more understanding, and most people talked to me as if nothing were out of the ordinary to begin with. In fact, as the days went on, I sometimes I forgot I had anything on my face at all. Unfortunately, every two weeks served as a reminder of my condition when I had to return home for another round of chemo. The headaches, nausea, and lack of energy became relatively normal during those final six weeks, but some days proved more difficult than others. On those days, I had to rely on those closest to me to push forward and take the next step, even if that was only a word of encouragement or simply sitting and watching an episode of Breaking Bad with me. Six weeks doesn’t seem long in theory, but there were times when I thought it would never end.

But, it did.

February 14^th (yes, Valentine’s Day) marked the last time I walked into the infusion center to receive chemo treatment. As always, I spent the majority of the time reading a book or listening to music, anything to pretend I wasn’t there so I could just push through to the end. As the nurse was hooking me up with my final saline drip, I looked up to see my parents, sister, and nearly every person who had been a part of my treatment walking into the room carrying balloons, a sign, and even chocolate-covered strawberries to celebrate the moment. I was so caught off guard that it took me a moment to realize what was going on. This place that was normally a quiet, soft-spoken area where I came to essentially do my duty and move on was now filled with bright colors and smiles, with so many of the people who had been with me through the highs and lows of this crazy ride. I’ll spare you any unnecessary emotional sap, but suffice it to say waterworks were definitely involved and my heart felt about ready to burst for all the love and appreciation I felt. This center at which I had spent the last several months has a bell hanging in the hallway that leads out of the building, and it’s a tradition for a person who has gotten their final treatment to ring it on their way out. I can say with absolute certainty that ringing a bell has never given me the level of satisfaction that it did that day.

As much as I wish finishing chemo meant an instant return to normal health and a chia pet-like regrowth of hair, that was not the case. In fact, for the next two weeks I dealt with side effects as severe as they had ever been, many times to the point that I had to step out of whatever class I was in to either get sick or simply gather myself. I quickly realized that the push was not over even though it seemed like it should be by all rights. Time seemed to slow down, almost painfully so, as I woke up each day hoping this time I would get up and feel completely well. As week followed week, however, I finally began to notice an overall improvement in the way I felt, but even more exciting than that was the steady appearance of an unfamiliar sight in my bathroom mirror each morning: fuzz. Though unimpressive by any normal standard of follicular activity, the unmistakable return of my hair seemed like a physical mark of the transition from the hope to the reality that things were going to get better. I used shampoo for the first time in months simply because I could, even if it was a bit excessive for the meager pelt I was sporting. I also didn’t mind that my new addition seemed to induce the compulsion in others to pet my head like a dog. It proved difficult not to do the same myself since my new hair was noticeably softer than before.

As great as all this improvement felt, I knew that the PET scan I had scheduled six weeks out from my final treatment would be the real decider as to whether or not this progression back to “regular” life could continue or if there still remained a battle to be fought for the right to live in my body. Of course, given the enormously positive results of my first scan two months into treatment, we didn’t expect anything other than good news, but even a small “what if?” feels impossible to ignore completely. Somehow or another, the time finally came that I found myself sitting in a room alongside my parents, waiting for the doctor to arrive and deliver the news. I tried to not let myself get prematurely excited, but when I saw the smile on my doctor’s face as she walked in, relief washed over me like water on a parched throat. She then proceeded to show us how the mass in my chest, originally over 13 centimeters in diameter and engulfing one side of my heart, was now a meager few centimeters and showing no sign of cancerous activity. After letting the beauty of that news sink in for a few moments, we began to discuss how to move forward from here. My doctor explained that I would come in to be checked again about every six months for a couple years, and then we would reduce the frequency to once a year for a few years after that. If I still showed no signs of relapse after that time, it might even be possible that the term “cancer-free” could be used. As for the advice she gave me for moving forward, I’ll never forget it: “Just live your life completely normally. No more restrictions.” In all of medicine, I am confident that there exists no better combination of words to hear.

As my parents and I left to go celebrate with some Five Guys’ burgers, I finally let my tired mind accept what I had wanted to be true for so long. I didn’t have to push, to put my head down and only hope for the end of another day; I could just be. I’ve had a lot of great burgers in my day, but the one I had that afternoon may have been the best yet.