Open Mic Night at the Chemo Lounge: Telling Our Cancer Stories to Benefit the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society

 

CLICK to listen to LYMPHO, MISTRESS OF MALADY - Steve Brodeur's Cancer Story for Open Mic Night at the Chemo Lounge... 

Scratch VO by SB

MY LYMPHO is a stage four femme fatale. There is no stage five.

We met in Brentwood, introduced ten years ago by Doctor X, my ear, nose and throat specialist. He had just biopsied a swollen node from the back of my neck.

He held it up to the light so I could get a better look. It was about the size and shape of an oversized kidney bean. He gently massaged it between his thumb and forefinger.

“I’ve been doing this for twenty-five years,” he told me.  “This doesn’t look or feel cancerous.”

The lab results told a different story, of course. Her full name was Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia.  CLL for short.

From the beginning, our chemistry was off the charts. Like me, she’s non-agressive and slow to develop. She takes her sweet time but she’s relentless. There is no cure for her. 

My Lympho never sleeps.

Sometimes in the middle of the night she perches on my chest like a succubus. Leaning over until we’re nose-to-nose, she tries to steal my breath away. I wake up with a start to find myself face-to-face with my cat Lola, but she isn’t fooling me.

My Lympho is a shape-shifter.

My celebrity oncologist Dr. Y strongly advised me to keep our relationship on the down-low. And for nearly three years - a period of what Dr. Y calls “watchful waiting” - we managed to do just that. Only my wife knew about Lympho and me. My wife knows everything.

Then on a visit back home my mom (mum), who hadn’t seen me in a year, outed us.

“What’s that on your neck, son?” This query from across the room at a family gathering. Disclosure time was suddenly upon me. I gathered the family around and put my cards on the table.  There was a single audible gasp from one of my sisters - a breast cancer survivor.

Lympho and I went another year before I really tried to break it off, with my first round of chemotherapy. Six treatments, spaced three weeks apart.

I came to think of the infusion treatment room at my Santa Monica cancer clinic as the Chemo Lounge. It serves about a dozen clients at a time. Some are in their 20’s and you’d never guess they're members of our cancer club, others are aged and sucking oxygen from portable tanks, looking like every breath might be their last;  and everyone in between.

At the end of my first day of treatment the infusion nurse looked at me closely and said “I think that swelling is already going down.”

The next morning I looked in the mirror and the swollen lymph nodes on the side of my neck were all but gone.

My Lympho was melting away. I didn’t see her again for almost two years. It was a welcome remission; and I began to forget the first letter in CLL stands for Chronic.

Then she was back, spiking my white blood cell count and swelling me up again.

My oncologist Dr. Y put me on a drug called Ibrutinib, the cutting edge new oral chemotherapy. The name sounds like one of Satan’s little helper demons, but Ibrutinib kept my Lympho at bay for almost four years.

Then she was back again with a vengeance, the little succubus. You know I can’t quit you, she whispers to me in the night.

Ten years together now and she’s taken her toll.  I'm melting away myself these days. I look in the mirror and see half the man I used to be; but I’m all the man I need to be for my Lympho...
  
Los Angeles, 2017

Illustration: Faithful to None, paperback cover by Ernest Darcy Chiriack

#mistressofmalady 
#noirmemoir



 

Where Is Thy Sting? (2017)

The new travel nurse is waiting for me in the cancer clinic’s closet-sized blood draw station. 

I trudge in with my Lympho.  I’m chemo bald and gaunt, forty pounds underweight, and Lympho is an apparition only I can see and hear; so there’s plenty of room for the two of us to share the single patient’s chair.

My life force is clearly at a low ebb; but Mistress Lympho, who loves needle play, is immediately like well, well, well, who do we have here?

Her name is Satu. I will soon ascertain that she’s a first generation Finnish-American from St. Paul, Minnesota. She’s twenty-something. Straight hair and angular features. She’s a full RN - a travel nurse requirement - but it’s a slow day back in the Chemo Lounge, so on her first day at the clinic she’s stuck in here with me doing fundamental phlebotomy.

Satu Linna, RN. It’s right there on her name tag as she leans in close to slide up each of my sleeves in turn, like she’s looking for contraband. Her eyes are kind but her appraisal is so cool I can almost feel it on my skin.

Poor Satu, Lympho says. You are not such an “easy stick” these days, are you Baby? Taunting me with phlebotomy slang, which she knows I’m a sucker for.

After six rounds of R-CHOP chemo, all the major veins in both my forearms are on hiatus, indefinitely. I’ve actually got a Power Port in my chest now which Satu, as an RN, is fully certified to tap. One quick stab in the chest, fill up those five little vials for my oncologist Dr. Y’s lab work,  pop out the needle, and it’s a wrap.

Or go with a peripheral draw from a forearm and the probability of multiple pokes in search of a suitable vein.

Power Ports are for pussies, Lympho laughs in my ear.

Six rounds of R-CHOP and here she is having the last laugh. But I’m highly immuno-suppressed, and Lympho’s excitement is contagious. Over the years in her capable hands I’ve become a blood draw connoisseur.

Peripheral draw it is. I offer up my right forearm.

Well, says Satu, I’ve seen worse veins than these, Mr. B. Much worse. 

Thank you, Satu. 

She’s puzzled for a second until I indicate her name tag. I can’t tell if her little eye roll is for me or for herself.

Oh it’s for you, Lympho assures me. She digs you. You got that chemo vampire mojo working overtime here.

Satu corrects my pronunciation of her name - it rhymes with tattoo.

Sattoo. That’s an awesome name. (And so L.A. !) Is it...?

It’s Finnish, she says.  There’s a slight huskiness to her voice. 

Finnish? Lympho laughs. We’re just getting started.

I’m thinking Righty is our man today,  I say, what do you think, Satu?

I like Righty too.

Satu ties me off just below my right bicep. What’s left of it.  She starts to tap around just below the elbow crease. I think we’re good if we stay up here, she says, and I’m instantly reassured.

And just like that a volunteer vein stands up to receive a couple of love taps from Satu, followed by a brisk but brief alcohol swab.

Very nice touch, Lympho whispers in my ear. Maybe you’re not such a “hard stick” after all.  Oh look, here comes my little green butterfly of love.

The blood draw spike is a fine gauge needle with a pair of little green plastic tabs like wings. The tail is a tiny plastic tube to feed each of those five little vials in turn.

The butterfly’s proboscis is so sharp it doesn’t pack much of a sting; but in the wrong hands, after multiple bites, it’s not so much the pain as it is the resentment. 

And then it really starts to get interesting, Lympho whispers in my ear. When you’ve really got some skin in the game. Poor Satu. Hey, do you know what Satu means in Finnish?

It’s Finnish for fuck off, bitch.

Then Lympho and I are laughing (me on the inside) and we take our eyes off the butterfly for maybe a couple of seconds, and that’s all the time it takes for Satu to slip it in.

There we go, she says. And...do we have a flow?  Yes,  okay, it looks like we’re all good. Good flow. You must be hydrating well, Mr. B.

Wow, Satu, I didn’t feel a thing.

Even better, this perfect stick lands a perfect bitch slap on Lympho. No pain, I never felt a thing and now I get to sip her profound disappointment like a fine liqueur.

The volunteer vein is standing at attention. The butterfly is happily drinking, as Satu checks my tourniquet.

Hey Lympho, this blood draw is primo. Here come some endorphins to kick your ass, Baby.

The first little vial is almost full.

You’ve really got “the touch” I tell Satu. Do you have any idea how rare that is? Because after six rounds of infusion chemo in the last seven months, plus three transfusions, and countless blood draws, I can tell you precisely how rare that is.

Satu’s little smile hints that she just might know how rare that is. Can you tell me by the time we fill these four vials? she says.

I’ll try my best.

What is this, Lympho laughs in my ear, Love at First Stick?

Loves of a Travel Nurse. I’m just another chapter, Baby.

Los Angeles, 2017

#mistressofmalady
#noirmemoir

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