Don't Just Do Something...Sit There!

Friday we return to chemo, and I resume my role as chemo-sabe.  As it turns out, the job description is pretty simple - be there (and, of course, "other duties as assigned").  As easy as it is to summarize, though, it's equally hard to carry out.

On chemo Day 1, Leslie is pretty upbeat and peppy.  She's had two weeks off and, while there is a cumulative effect, she's more or less at her peak of feeling well.  She's usually got a good appetite, so part of my job is packing breakfast, lunch and snacks (it's a long day - 7:45 to about 3:30). Almost right away, though, they give her Benadryl to head off reaction to the drugs, and that puts her into a valley of grogginess that lasts about an hour.  I seek out the least disruptive place to park myself (near her head for stroking as called for) and get to work.*  I start in on my two large travel mugs of coffee.

 

Even after the grog wears off, there's not a lot we can do other than talk and read.  Having a few liters of saline and drugs pumped into your body doesn't lend itself to sitting up and playing games or going for walks (though she is on a mobile IV pole).  The lingering effects of the Benadryl make the Friday NY Times crossword and KenKen pretty challenging.  Even a massage doesn't necessarily appeal when it means lying on a tummy filled with fluids (though at the end of each treatment, she has to lie uncomfortably on each side and her stomach for 15 minutes to "marinate").

Holding hands helps.

Day 8 chemo tends to be even quieter.  A week of queasiness, plus the anxiety of willingly delivering yourself for a noxious experience, leads to most of the morning being spent under headphones, drifting on a Pandora folk stream.

Once home, I can release my inner "gofer."  I'm a putterer by nature, happiest up and about bouncing from task to task.

(Why, then, you might well ask, is our house such a mess?  I am a surface putterer: doing dishes gives me pleasure; making decisions about piles of paper provokes catatonia.  Thank you for asking, though.)

The hurt of watching your spouse - my stronger half, to be certain - in discomfort and anxiety, is offset only a tiny bit by keeping busy, fetching ginger ale and blankets, chasing away the cats, locating wayward phones, slicing melon.  I've volunteered a few times to take my turn getting the chemo, but apparently there are rules against that.

Just being there helps, but so it seems does just not being there.  Leslie nearly had to push me out of the house to spend a weekend away running my favorite crazy trail race, but when I checked in with her, she was up and about.  Sometimes - a bit counter-intuitively - the more you do for yourself, the more energy you have.

Last week, both Leslie and I woke up in the middle of the night (not uncommon these days).  I put my arm over her and she said, "just having you do that makes me feel calmer."  "Don't just do something, sit there" takes getting used to, but it's good to know it's effective caregiving.

* Work = bouncing among e-mail, Facebook, various blogs and the Friday five-star Sudoku, plus the occasional sympathy nap.