Treatment Begins

OK, I’ve done a lot of research on the medical end of this, talked to a lot of people, but I’m not a doctor or a nurse and I’m lucky enough to have never gone through this myself. I’ll probably make some mistakes in the details and if you notice any, please let me know. The gist of this is fairly accurate, though.

 ______________________________________

We got to New York on Sunday, around three in the afternoon and found where we were staying with no problem. The directions were good, but then they’d been giving them out for years.

When we were driving across the George Washington Bridge I started thinking about the last time I’d done that—driven the bridge, I mean. It was the time Justin had run away with my credit card after the loft was robbed. Fuck me, I’d been as pissed as I’d ever been that day and I took it out of his ass. And in his ass.

Literally.

This time I just wanted it to be like that day was, pissed, knowing I’d find the twat, the hot fuck he’d planned all along and then the drive back with him knowing that his butt was mine, at least for a while.

Jennifer had driven with us to help us get settled and to reassure herself that her son would be in the best possible hands.

Some strings had been pulled and we would be allowed to stay at Ronald McDonald House just a couple of blocks up from the main buildings of Sloan Kettering and if I believed in God I’d thank him for that favor.

I’m not sure what the age cutoff is for RMDH, but I’m pretty sure that Justin was beyond it by a couple of years. He’s a kid, a college kid, but it’s for the younger crowd really—really young kids through high school. It’s for kids and their families to stay in during cancer treatment—a place where they can live and not be pointed out as freaks or sickies by anyone who happened by and I was happy as a pig in shit that they were going to let us stay.

Y’see, I didn’t fucking know this before but when you’re in treatment—in chemo or radiation—you can be an outpatient a lot of the time. You go in to the hospital early in the morning, they plug you in and six or eight hours later you can go away until tomorrow.

When I heard that the doctor’s had somehow gotten us in—there’s usually a waiting list—I was pretty embarrassed. I mean, just the name is enough to cause some major cringing but I did a shit load of research on the place and I was a convert pretty Goddamned fast, believe me.

A family (that’s me and Justin) could stay there for twenty dollars a night and if that’s too much the fees are waived. You get a bed room with a private bath, a shared kitchen where you do your own cooking and you get to know that you’re not alone fighting the monster you’re engaged with. They bring in anyone they can think of who might get the kids minds off of where they are and what they do all day—Bruce Springsteen stopped by unannounced one night while we were hanging out, posed with the kids and sang a couple of songs. He’s a decent guy. They had the make-up people from Bloomingdale’s doing makeovers on the girls. There were crafts and music and a saltwater aquarium to watch. They have terraces and videos and a library. They have quiet and a dining room where you can talk to people who are going through what you are. Some people stay for a week, some stay for six or eight months. Some are local, some come from Christ knows where because when your kid is sick you do whatever the fuck you have to do.

Thank God for the place.

You know those boxes they have on the counters when you go in for fries and a Big Mac? Put your change in them, OK? It’s a fucking good deal.

I mean it. Throw in a couple of Goddamned quarters.

Anyway, so we get there and we get out bags up to our room and they were nice and helpful and all that shit. We got the tour and they showed us how to get to Sloan from where we were then they suggested a couple of places to eat dinner that were close by and not too much money.

I was watching Jenn and she looked like shit, let me tell you and when Jennifer Taylor doesn’t look perfect you know that it’s time to hold the presses. She had these circles under her eyes and she didn’t eat much. Her conversation veered from trivia about things like the laundry and asking detailed questions about his treatment and what we could expect over the next few months.

She was close to losing it—closer even than when Justin was in the Goddamned coma. That time it was like she could focus her anger at me or Hobbs or the press hounding her—this time there was no one to blame.

It was just bad luck.

The dinner done, we went back to the room, Jennifer stopping to see about some arrangements or other that she wanted clarified so Justin and I went upstairs alone.

We walked through the area they called the living—there were families there pretending that they were having a good time, that there was nothing grotesque about ten year olds in bathrobes and no hair playing Monopoly or Tomb Raider, that it was just a normal evening back at the ranch.

And Justin—God, Justin. He was quiet and trying not to be scared but he was scared to death. He knew that the treatment would be Hell and he knew there was no getting around it. He knew that there was a chance that he would lose his hand—they’d been talking about the possibility of having to amputate if they couldn’t contain the tumor—or that the tumor would spread and that the best case scenario was that he would go through months of a fucking living nightmare and then, he might have to go through it all again with no promises that it would accomplish anything.

And he was worried about me. Did I tell you that? He was afraid that I would get tired of taking care of him, that I would lose patience with not having fucking marathons, that I’d find someone who wasn’t sick to take his place, that I’d lose my job.

He was afraid that he would lose his hair and look like shit. He was afraid that I wouldn’t want to be seen with him. He was afraid that I’d be tricking and had even said that he thought that I should so I could get some stress relief.

He was afraid that he would lose me.

He was afraid that he’d be a burden, that he wasn’t worth it. He was afraid that his mother would try to take over, that he’d become infantilized by his disease.

He was afraid that he’d be alone.

He was afraid that he was going to die.

So was I.

So we got up to the room and I was about to suggest that he/we take a shower to relax us both—what I meant was that we would fuck, obviously—and he just gave me this look and I remember opening my arms and just holding him for like fucking ever. He didn’t cry and neither did I, but we both knew that this was when it really started. Tomorrow we’d go down a couple of blocks and he’d be put on the Goddamned treadmill and it’s like when they spin the wheel—where she stops, nobody knows, folks.

I moved us to the bathroom and got his clothes off of him and got the water going, but once we were in there it just continued like it had in the outer room. I just stood there with the water beating down on us holding him and there wasn’t anything sexual about it, for once.

By the time he was ready to let go, we could hear his mother moving around through the door and he gave me this look like—shit, she’s sleeping here and I knew that he would have liked for us to be alone so he would be able to do or say whatever came into his mind tonight.

And I knew with his mother three feet away, he wouldn’t be able to let out whatever he had to and I knew that I couldn’t ask her to leave and that he’d just have to suck it up tonight, no matter how he felt.

Shit. One more thing that bit the big one.

There were two beds in the room and Jen was going to take one that night with Justin and me in the other. I didn’t care. I mean, shit—this wasn’t what you’d call a sensual situation or anything and I was pretty fucking tired but when I came out of the bathroom, glanced at her and got into bed with her son she had this look on her face like it was finally real—I mean that Justin and I slept together regularly, like she used to with Craig, and I think that was a revelation to her, too.

She knew—she’s known for years that we were lovers, but to watch me pull back the sheets and get in next to Justin was a dose of real life that I think she’d managed to block out for way the fuck too long.

Tough shit.

He curled into my arms and I held him with his mother a couple feet away and that’s how we slept that first night.

We had to be up at six thirty the next morning to get down the street by eight so that they could run a few more tests and get him started on the first round of chemo.

He was scared as shit, we all were, but we all pretended that this would be a good thing, that it was just a trip to the doctor and that it would be OK.

Christ.

We went down First Ave to—shit, was it 61^st or 62^nd?—well, whatever—the cross street that the entrance for the Pediatric wing in on, found the elevators and got to the third floor.

There had been a debate about whether to treat him with the kids or the adults and, Christ knows why, but they opted for the Pediatric wing.

Whatever, so long as they gave him what he needed they could have treated him in the department of veterinary science for all I cared.

They were expecting us, just like a good hotel, everyone was introduced—the nurses and the various techs and doctors. There were a shit load of them, like you couldn’t believe that there were so fucking people who did this sort of shit day in and day out.

They were so Goddamned matter of fact about it, just another day at work.

A couple of hours later Justin had given samples of blood and urine, they’d been run through some lab and he was recovering in a small room from having a shunt installed in his chest so that they could begin the chemo in a couple of days.

That’s a sort of plug so that they don’t have to keep sticking his veins—his form of treatment would involve an IV drip. You can also get chemo in pill form. Christ, who the Hell knew that? They could just plug him in like a garden hose.

That was Monday.

Jenn left later that day, she had to get back to Molly but it was killing her to have to leave Justin and it was killing him to have her there. Every time he looked at her he saw what it was doing to her and—fuck—he just didn’t need it.

She was trying. Shit knows she was trying, but she was dying inside and she didn’t have the Kinney denial genes to hide that fact. I suppose that an argument could be made that she had the WASP genes to take their place and you’d have a good case, but Catholic repression beats just about anything anyone else has going, at least in my book.

So, it was just him and me and cancer after that.

OK, sure, Jenn called all the time and by then the family knew that something was up so they were trying to get in touch, too, but Justin and I were the only ones who were actually there.

I’d brought my laptop, of course, so we had e-mail and there was so much from everyone demanding to know what was going on that I finally had to call Jennifer a couple of days later and ask her if she would have everyone over or meet them at the diner or something and just let them know the score and tell them to just leave us the fuck alone.

Send cards if they wanted, fine, sure, whatever, but neither of us had the time or the energy to handle their shit, no matter how well intentioned it was.

She did it and I guess that you could have heard a fucking pin drop at Deb’s over a pasta dinner when she broke the news but it had to be done.

And my Goddamned job? That wasn’t as big a problem as I thought that it would be.

You see, when you’re a Goddamned partner and haven’t taken a vacation in five years you can take an emergency leave for a family crisis when you have to.

Gardner dropped some hints that since Justin wasn’t actually listed on my benefits as a domestic partner he could have denied me the time, but when I—tactfully—pointed out that I was going whether he approved or not and that if he gave me shit I’d use the time in New York to do some job hunting he backed down pretty fucking fast.

I never said he was stupid.

Then I suggested that I would be able to spend at least some time courting clients there and he practically beamed. I fucking love it when Gardner flushes with excitement—his head turns red.

It’s pretty funny.

OK, so the shunt was in and they let him have two days to get used to it before they started the hardcore shit.

To shrink the tumor in his arm they used direct radiation and because an arm isn’t a vital organ, they even smeared some kind of grease on the area to really concentrate the rays and burn the crap out of his arm. They did that every day.

They tumor started to go down.

Then his hand froze into some kind of a claw because if the burning and the nerve damage and they had to use some morphine derivative to kill the pain when they straightened it out for him.

That was bad.

He was also started on the chemo drip and you’d think that would be pretty dramatic and all kinds of Doctor Killdare types rushing in and out but it’s actually pretty boring.

Justin would go into this small room on the third floor that had two beds and no window. Sometimes there would be someone in the other bed, sometimes there wouldn’t. He just wore his regular street clothes, but he did take his shoes off.

WASP training—no shoes on the bed.

The tech would bring in an IV bag and some tubes and they’d hook him up to the thing and he’d just lay there for six or seven hours. Sometimes he’d nod off, sometimes he’d read. Sometimes we’d talk. Occasionally he’d talk on the phone to Daphne or someone.

That was how the day would be spent, Monday through Friday, two weeks on, two weeks off the chemo.

The radiation would go in cycles and between the cycles—or during if need be—he’d be evaluated to see how it was all working.

The treatments began to wipe him out.

We knew that his hair would fall out, and it did. Clumps of it on the pillow in the morning and in the comb and going down the drain.

He started a collection of hats and caps, partly to hide the fact that he was bald and partly just to stay warm.

He lost his appetite and threw up all the time.

He lost weight.

He slept almost nonstop and one of the things I learned about the treatment was that the chemo killed his immune system so he needed blood transfusions and infusions of platelets. I started spending time down at the Sloan Kettering blood bank and got to know the people there pretty well. They told me that my platelet count was high—over 400, so I would be allowed to give almost three units, but I could only donate every three weeks.

After the chemo treatments his count was down to six or eight.

That meant that he had roughly the clotting capacity of a hemophiliac.

Fuck me, the things you learn when you have to.

You want to know what killed me? I mean, do you want to know what really just fucking floored me?

Justin, the world’s premier drama queen was so Goddamned sick that he couldn’t keep anything down, couldn’t keep his eyes open, couldn’t walk twenty yards with out resting and he apologized that he wasn’t good company.

I mean, fucking excuse me?

He’s lying on a Goddamned bed with tubes siphoning poison into his bloodstream and he’s telling me he’s sorry that he’s falling asleep.

I swear to God. I’ll never complain about anything again in my life, as long as I live.

  Return to Remission