‘The Last of the Baddies’
By John Bach
Julie waiting her turn inside the Barrett Cancer Center at the UC Cancer Center.
Thanks to COVID-19, I’m not able to join Julie during her pre-treatment meetings with the doctor, so she puts me on speaker phone so I can join the conversation from the lobby of the Barrett Cancer Center. It’s a relatively decent solution to a very sucky situation.
Fortunately, I can still be with her during the actual treatments inside the chemo suite. I can’t imagine her going through these alone. But plenty of women do. Julie has such a sensitive system that she tastes every drug they pump into her port. Then the nausea sets in, and I watch her slowly fade and fight back getting sick.
Treatment days normally begin with a fair amount of anxiety as she thinks through what’s coming. Walking in from the parking garage today, she said “let’s just skip it and leave. I think I’m all better now.” She was joking, but I’m pretty sure if I would have turned back to the car, she would have followed.
Today was significant because it is the fourth of four “Red Devil” treatments. Or, as Dr. Elyse Lower calls it, the “last of the baddies.” Julie has Triple Negative Breast Cancer, so the chemo regimen calls for a cocktail of Adriamycin and Cytoxan (A/C) four times over two months. I’m excited to share that the doc can no longer feel Julie’s tumor, which was nearly an inch in size over the summer.
That doesn’t mean we are done, though. Far from it. Two weeks from now, she will start a weekly chemo dose of Taxol every Friday for three months, then we face surgery options, followed by radiation.
Still, for today, we celebrate the “last of the baddies.”
Today’s treatment celebration was the best pizza in town at Two Cities in Mason.
We always end treatment days with a good cheat meal and dessert. Julie has essentially stopped eating sugar, and she has laid off the carbs in an attempt to boost her health as much as possible. But on these days, she gets whatever she wants. It’s OK, these are doctor’s orders. We ended the day with some amazing takeout from Two Cities Pizza and a stop at Marcella’s for donuts.
