We’ll just consider him to be a drug for me.
Standing up, Stevie and I follow the nurse back to an examination room. I notice a tray of instruments laid out on a blue paper cloth next to the exam table: a large needle and a long spike-looking thing with a blue plastic handle.
Okay…blood pressure escalating right now.
Taking a deep breath, I let it out slowly and try to fill my mind with images of Garrett. It works for a moment, then the nurse distracts me by handing me a large paper sheet.
“You’ll need to get undressed…everything from the waist down. You can wrap this around you.”
“Okay,” I say, taking the paper from her.
“Did you take the Ativan as directed?” she asks as she flips open my chart.
“Yes…about half an hour ago.”
“Good, you should be feeling the effects of that,” she says with a quick smile. “The procedure is simple and quick.”
I nod at her, my throat so dry that I doubt words would come out at this point.
“Dr. Yoffman will be in shortly,” she says, and then she’s gone.
Stevie turns his back on me while I get undressed. After wrapping the paper sheet around me, I climb awkwardly onto the table and put my hands, which are slightly shaking, onto my lap. I kick my feet back and forth nervously as I wait.
“It’s going to be fine,” Stevie says as he steps next to the table and rubs my back.
“Sure it is,” I say with false bravado, and hate myself that my voice quavers.
Moving in front of me, Stevie places his hands on my shoulders and leans in close. “You are the bravest, baddest bitch I know. You amaze me with how you’ve handled everything so far. You are going to kick this cancer’s ass…I just know it.”
“Fuck yeah I am.” His words make me feel immensely braver.
“So, while we’re waiting…fill me in on your date last night. And I don’t care about what you ate or what you talked about. I want to know about the sex. Lay it on me, girlfriend.”
Snickering, I open my mouth to give him some minor details, but the door opens and I see Dr. Yoffman walking in, followed by the nurse.
He gives me a warm smile as he shuts the door, and then his gaze rakes over Stevie in all his pink, sparkly glory. He grins and offers his hand. “I’m Dr. Yoffman.”
“I’m her bestie, Stevie. Is this procedure going to hurt her?” he asks as he shakes my doctor’s hand, his eyes moistening with tears.
“It won’t be too uncomfortable,” Dr. Yoffman says. “She’ll be numbed up pretty good. I’m going to have you stand by her head…you can hold her hand through the procedure.”
“Okay,” Stevie says, his voice cracking.
Dr. Yoffman picks up the chart the nurse left behind and flips through some pages. Turning to me, he closes the folder and brings it up to his chest, folding his arms over it.
“So, we got back the results of your blood work and CT scan already. The CT scan shows an inflamed nodule on your lung, so based on that and the symptoms you’ve been having, I want to go ahead and start treating this as if it’s a stage-four disease.”
“Is that the worst kind?” I whisper fearfully.
“Yes,” he says as he throws the chart back down on the table. Walking up to me, he reaches out and squeezes my shoulder. “But like I told you before, this disease is treatable. We have a good chance of knocking it into remission. So I’d like to go ahead and start treatment tomorrow.”
“What does that mean? Start treatment?”
“I’m going to start you on a combo of Rituxin, which is an immunotherapy drug, and bendamustine, which is a chemotherapy drug. Tomorrow you’ll get both the Rituxin and bendamustine, both intravenously, then the day after, you’ll get another dose of bendamustine. We’ll do that treatment every four weeks for six cycles. I’ll do repeat scans at the halfway mark to see how you’re responding, and we’ll do another bone-marrow biopsy after the sixth cycle, and hopefully we’ll find it’s in remission.”
“And the side effects?” I ask quietly. “I mean…I know you said I wouldn’t lose my hair, but I’m sure something’s going to happen to me, right?”
“You might get a little sick. We’ll give you antinausea medication before the treatment, and I’ll send you home with some…but you might feel poorly for a few days. But then you should be fine.”
“Anything else?”
“We’ll monitor your blood…you’re anemic now, and I’ll put you on some iron for that. Because chemotherapy stops cells from dividing, it could affect your white or red blood cell counts, but otherwise this treatment is fairly mild and shouldn’t cause you too many problems.”
Okay, that doesn’t sound all that bad. And he says that this will probably go into remission. Taking a deep breath, I let it out slowly and smile at him.
“All right. I can do this. So, let’s get this show on the road while the Ativan is still working.”
Dr. Yoffman laughs and turns to wash his hands in the sink. “That’s what I like to hear. Now go ahead and lie down on left your side. Stevie…post up by her head and hold tight on to her hand. This won’t be too painful, but I know it’s all kinds of scary. I’ll talk you through the entire procedure.”
I lay on my side, pulling the paper sheet around me so as not to expose myself to Stevie. Not that he’d be bothered by it, but he definitely wouldn’t know what to do with it either. I snicker to myself thinking that.