Chemo

My plane touched down on the tarmac at O’Hare at 12:35.  Back home in Chicago once more, I took a deep breath and sighed, trying to fortify myself for what was to come. 

The weather was just as bad as when I left Boston this morning; both cities had intermittent sleet and freezing rain, which played havoc with the departure and arrival schedules all over the northeast and Midwest.  We were damned lucky to finally get clearance to land.   

I was exhausted.  I dragged my ass through the frigid Jetway, shrugging back into the coat I carried as I juggled my two pieces of carry-on luggage. Once I got out to the terminal, I immediately began to scan for my brother and his boyfriend.

O’Hare was the usual zoo, so I didn’t spot either of them right off.  I hoped they hadn’t given up on me and turned around and gone home to wait it out.  I glanced down at my watch.  It was 12:50. My eyes felt grainy. If I was at home, I’d have been in bed hours ago since I worked an early shift at the pharmacy.  A bed right now would feel unbelievably good.

I kept moving, swept up by the stream of humanity. 

“Paul!”  I heard Ben’s voice calling.  I turned around and he walked toward me, carrying a tall white cup.

“Hey!”  I said.  “Where’s Ray?”

“I’m sorry. He was exhausted, so I took him back home.  Your arrival was rescheduled four times, and we didn’t know how much longer it was really going to be.”

“That’s okay, I understand.” 

He reached out his free hand to shake.  I ignored it and gave him a kind of half hug.  I mean, I think that as “brothers-in-law”, we were a little beyond the formality.  He returned the hug very tentatively, careful of his coffee.  “Long day,” he said, gesturing, explaining the presence of a cup of Joe at this time of night.  “Needed a little fortification.”

“No problem.  I’m sorry. I should have called from the plane.”

“It’s no trouble.  May I take your bag?”

“’S’okay, I got it.”

We got underway.

“So how’s he doing, anyway?”

“Well,” Ben sighed, “He’s extremely anxious about his first chemo. Ma took him to his first radiation therapy this morning, and that went fine.”

I had to smile at Ben Fraser calling my Ma ‘Ma’.  But I felt a little pang of something else too, at that comment.  Sadness? Jealousy?  It was like she had replaced me.  Well, that’s what I get, I suppose, for being away for so long.

“Do you know the dose? What is the frequency?” I asked, thoughts turning back to Ray and the problem at hand. 

“Forty Gray, thirty minutes per treatment.”

I grunted, and we walked in silence for a bit.

Finally I said, when the silence had gone on long enough for it to be awkward, “I did some brushing up on my chemotherapy pharma.  R+CHOP chemo is the best thing going for NHL treatment right now.  Rituximab sounds like quite the wonder drug.  I’m confident that Ray can beat this thing.”

Ben continued walking in silence.  “Yes,” he said finally.

“Ben.  You gotta believe in him.  You do, don’t you?”

“Of course,” he said, after a long pause, voice rising in a peculiar way.  I glanced at him. His bottom lip was trembling. Dio Mio.  Give us all strength.

“Hey, come on.  I know Ray’s scrawny, but he’s pretty tough,”  I reassured him.  “Did he ever tell you about the time when we were in eighth grade and he got into a fight with this kid named Jimmy Antonfrancesco?”

“No, I don’t believe so.”

“Let me tell you.  At the time, Ray was about five feet or five one tops, maybe one hundred pounds soaking wet, and this kid Jimmy was about, I don’t know, like, seven-one or something.  And it turns out they liked the same girl named Rosalie Cristofano, right? Let me tell you about this girl, Ben.  This girl….”

I went on as we stepped out into the frigid night air; just me rambling, just shooting the shit to take Ben’s mind off the grim situation. I slung my arm around him during the long walk to the car. By the time we got to it, I had him laughing.

VVVVVV

Ray and I arrived in the surgical department at eight thirty, and Ma met us there.  She threw her arms around me when she saw me. 

Due to the lateness of arriving last night, Ben and I had driven back to his and Ray’s place, and we had both gone straight to bed. Ray was already sleeping. 

As soon as we got in the car, I had called the house and gotten Tony, but Ma and everybody else had gone to bed hours ago.  I told him don’t wake Ma up; I’d call her in the morning.

Ma looked good under the circumstances.  She looked tired, and just a little older, but okay.  She was working a double today, but she checked in, nonetheless.  I’d always admired Ma’s devotion to her work.  She’d been taking care of sick babies for a long time.  She’d gone to nursing school once Francesca started kindergarten, and had been at this hospital for almost twenty years now.  And no signs of slowing down, it looked like.

In preparation for starting his chemo, Ray was getting a Hickman central line installed under his collarbone.  The chemo agents would then be delivered via this catheter.  He was at stage three, having numerous “hot spots” in his neck, chest, and abdomen.  Dr. Taddeo was going after the cancer pretty aggressively, wanting to cut it off before in encroached on Ray’s spleen.

They wheeled him in to surgery around nine-thirty, and Ma and I were faced with one another.

“Would you like to go to the chapel, Paolo, and say a few prayers for Raimundo?”

I shook my head.  “If it’s all the same, Ma, I’d rather not.  I don’t really…practice anymore,” I admitted. “I don’t really believe in that stuff.”

“Another ‘lapsed’ Catholic, eh? You don’t go to church at all anymore?”

“No Ma. Not in years.”

“No wonder the world is in the shape that it is. Nobody believes in anything anymore. Nobody believes in morals. Such a pity, the world these days.”

Oh yeah.  I forgot about Ma’s passive-aggressive guilt-inducing bullshit.  The world was for shit because I wasn’t a devout Catholic? “You know, I don’t get you, Ma! I don’t go to church and say my ‘hail Mary’s’ and I’m a bad person.  Ray’s turned into a raging homosexual, and you don’t say anything about that? How do you reconcile that?”

“One’s got nothing to do with another.”

“What?”

“Benito is a wonderful, loving man who has been nothing but good to this family.  I believe God sent Benito to us, for he knew this time was coming.”

“Wouldn’t it have been simpler for God just to not give Ray cancer in the first place?”

“And who are you to question God’s will?”  Ma asked.  She fixed me with that ‘look’, that Ma look that only she could give, and it worked like a charm, quickly reducing me to rubble, just like it did when I was six.

“Nobody, I guess, Ma. I’m just nobody.”  It was futile to get into it with her.  I’d never once won an argument with her. 

We grabbed seats and sat in total silence for a long five minutes. “Perhaps we could have some coffee,” she said, a compromise of sorts, I suppose. 

“Alright,” I said, with grateful relief.

Ma took my hand, and led me to the cafeteria.  Her hand was very warm.

VVVVVV

Ma had returned to Pediatrics and it was just my brother and I in the treatment room, or “Club Med” as we discovered the group liked to call it. 

The room contained six bright yellow Barcaloungers, full to capacity once Ray arrived.  An artist had painted a beach and lounge chairs on one wall, and an ocean and horizon on the opposite wall.  A folded beach umbrella was leaned in the corner.  I guess you could say it was like a beach resort, albeit one crowded with medical equipment and bags and bags of intravenous drugs.

We had been in this room for about three hours so far, and Ray was only halfway done. After inserting the central line in the O.R., they had administered an anti-emetic through the tube to prevent nausea. 

Then his nurse had started a very cautious, slow drip of the Doxorubicin, which was taking forever. At least Ray was tolerating it well. But we hadn’t even gotten to the vincristine and cyclophosphamide yet. My butt was hurting.  The hard little chairs they provided for visitors weren’t nearly as comfortable as the Barcaloungers. 

After today, they’d send Ray home with a five-day course of prednisolone tablets.  Then he could give his body a rest for nine days, thus completing his first course of R+CHOP14. 

I had already read two magazines, and was immensely bored.  I put my reading material aside and decided to join in the sporadic conversation that was taking place all around me. 

Over the course of the long afternoon, I got to know a lot about the other patients.  Ray dozed, fading in and out, sometimes joining the conversation, sometimes just listening.

They were all pretty friendly people, and welcomed Ray, “the new kid,” with open arms. 

Each person had introduced themselves by their name and their cancer. There was Daniel, who looked only forty-something, but had a particularly nasty form of pancreatic cancer;  Frederik, the only quiet one in the lot, had colo-rectal. He had some kind of accent I couldn’t quite place, something Slavic, Hungarian or Czech maybe.

Two men, Kenny and Lee, both had prostate.  Darcy, the only woman in the group, had lung cancer.

Their oncology nurse was one Rocco St. Onge, who looked like he had been locked up in prison for ten years and did nothing but lift weights.  He had huge tattooed biceps, and a mop of spiky red hair. He was one of those mean-looking short guys, who looked like he could tear your head off with one swift rip.

Course, that was dispelled as soon as he opened his mouth.  He had to be the softest- spoken man I’d ever encountered.

Most of the patients had been together for several weeks now. Lee was the newest, having started his chemo only last month.  Darcy was the veteran of the group.  She had had lung cancer five years prior, and had gone into remission. Now it was back, and she was six months into her chemo.  She was a large boned-woman, tall, with brilliant blue eyes.  Hard to say what color hair she had, as she had none visible.  A red, pink, and teal scarf was artfully wrapped around her head, and she had no eyebrows. 

She and Ray had an extended conversation about the Bulls, the only time during the afternoon when he really perked up. 

Ray and I were the last to leave.  Ma visited with us near the end. She had sat with Ray during her lunch hour while I took a break- got some food and walked around to stretch my legs.  Ray was so exhausted that he had to be wheeled out in a chair. 

We loaded him into the car to make the short drive to our boyhood home.

VVVVVV

Maria had baked chicken for dinner.  I had prepared and cooked mashed potatoes, and made sauce béarnaise for the string beans and had prepared candied carrots.  The family was duly impressed. I had turned into quite the chef these past few months.  Emelia was practically living with me on the weekends, making the weekly drive up from Westport Friday nights.  We still went out to dinner on occasion, but lately we’d been staying in and I cooked for her.

Ray was doing okay in terms of experiencing nausea, thanks goodness. However, we didn’t want to push our luck.  He was having chicken broth and mashed potatoes.  Ben had brought him some peppermint tea which he sipped on. Its pungency was soothing.

I sat amongst the usual rapid-fire conversation, just taking it all in, getting used to it once again.  It was a tight squeeze around the table. Ma and Tony sat at opposite ends and Tony conversed with his sons about the spring baseball tryouts at their schools. Ray, Ben, Raphy and Donny were squeezed in on one side, and Maria and Fran sat on my side.  Marissa and Roseanna were wedged in on either side of their mother.  We couldn’t help but bump each other’s elbows as we ate.

“So,” Fran said to Ray as she cut up her chicken into bite-sized pieces, “I talked to Elaine Besbriss today. She said she’d called your place afternoon and left a message on your machine.  She heard about you through Jack Huey. I told her you’d be staying here after your chemo, so she said she would try you back later this weekend.”

“How’s she doing?” he asked.

“Good.  The morning sickness had passed now that she’s out of her first trimester. She and Ike have picked out the cutest names; Lisa-Beth Francine for a girl and Evan Isaac John for a boy. Oh! How cute!” she gushed. “I can’t wait to start buying baby clothes for it! I hope it’s a girl. Their clothes are so much fun to pick out!” 

Maria piped in, “Tell her she can have all of Marissa’s baby things.  By the time she has the baby, Marissa will be out of diapers so she can have the changing table, and the bassinet too.  This baby factory is closed,” she said wryly.  Maria helped herself to more potatoes and carrots, and then scooped a little more carrots onto Marissa’s plate, too.  “Isn’t that right, Marissa?” She cooed and made a face.  “Isn’t that right?”  Marissa giggled, and grabbed some mashed potatoes and put them in her hair.  She pealed with laughter.

Maria, exasperated, grabbed a cloth and cleaned the food out of the child’s hair.  

“More broth, Raimundo?” Ma asked.

“That’s okay, Ma.”

“Have some carrots.  They’re really good.”

“I’m full, Ma.”

“Just a few bites.”  Ma spooned carrots off her own plate, and held them up to her son’s mouth.  “Come on,” she said.

Ray made a face.  “Ma!” he whined.

“Raimundo!” she said sharply, “Open!”

Ray immediately opened his mouth, and she shoved in a spoonful.

“So I was thinking of having a baby,” Francesca said casually.

“What?!!!” four of us said at once.

“Well! Hello!  In case anybody cares, I’ll be thirty years old in a couple of days, and it’s not happening for me, so what do you want me to do?”  She began to sniffle.

“Oh, Francesca! Bambina!” Ma said.  “You have plenty of time for that.”

“Do I, Ma? You were only twenty when you had Ray, and you were thirty when you had me. And I don’t even have any prospects!”

“Back then we were stupid.  If I had know then what I know now, I would have waited until my thirties to start having children. 

“Fran,” Maria said.  “Raising kids is a ton of work.  You shouldn’t even think of taking on something like that by yourself, not if you can help it.”

“But you do fine, Maria,”

“I’m not doing it alone.  I’ve got Tony, and Ma, and Ray and Ben and you to help out.”

“But I want a little baby! A little girl to buy cute clothes for, and to take to the park, and to teach hopscotch and Red Rover to…I’m tired of being all alone! I haven’t had a date in six months.” She began to weep in earnest.

“Then move back home, Francesca, if you’re that lonely,” Ma soothed.

She shook her head.  “I can’t come crawling home like some child.  I’m not a child.”  She blew her nose.  “Why can’t I have a relationship like Ray and Frase have? I mean…not exactly like they have. I mean with a guy.  I mean, I know they’re both guys, but I mean like two guys would have if one of them was a girl.  Well, you know what I mean.”

I had to chuckle at her very Frannie-like rambling.

“Oh, baby girl, it will come,” Ma said.  “Be patient. God will see you through.”

“Think you could ask God to hurry it up just a bit, Ma?”

We all laughed. Fran wiped her eyes.

Ma suddenly clasped her hands together, and looked toward the ceiling.  She began a recitation: 

“Gloria al Padre

e al Figlio

e allo Spirito Santo.”

I instantly recognized it as “Glory Be to the Father” although I hadn’t heard it in twenty years. 

“Come era nel principio

e ora e sempre,

nei secoli dei secoli.

Amen.”

“What was that for, Ma?” Ray asked.

“For bringing all of my children to the dinner table, Raimundo. Today is a happy day.”

I leaned over, and gave my mother a kiss.