Waiting Room Woes

 Sitting in the waiting room at New York Oncology Hematology (NYOH). Probably the youngest people within a 400 square foot radius, and the sterility is intense. 

There’s a woman behind me talking about someone else’s business, I can’t tune her out. We spend a lot of time here. Matt more so than I. He’s here every Wednesday from 8:00am to 2:30pm, working from a treatment chair. That timeframe is only the prep for chemo. He brings the chemo pump home for forty-six hours, then returns on Friday for the disconnect. I don’t know how he does it. I start dreading the next treatment before the current one starts. The weekend after disconnecting from chemotherapy/immunotherapy is brutal. Matt’s exhausted and our girls aren’t. Ever.

He doesn’t start to feel any better until six or seven days after disconnect, and by then we’re counting down to the next cycle. Every week I tell myself it could get easier, I just keep praying. It hasn’t yet if you were wondering and that’s not me being Negative Nancy or Pessimistic Pete. There’s always something, and no routine to be found, but we adapt. 

Tomorrow’s the dreaded day… again. I’m thankful for family and friends as chaos ensues and I prepare to be [extra] exhausted holding down the fort to give Matt the time he needs to focus on rest and getting through treatment. 

We are sitting in the exam room now, more sterile gray linoleum floors and terrible lighting. We start looking through the family calendar to schedule the appointments to come: palliative care, colorectal surgery follow-up, bloodwork, that’s just to name a few. Then I start wondering what time tonight the Johns Hopkins Review Board will meet, and when we’ll know their opinion. I’ve been trying to stay hopeful that all the possibilities and unknowns are not reason for concern and merely they are  exaggerated by the radiology report. I start wondering if their superior imaging is too superior and exaggerated the truth of what lingers in my husband’s insides. Not my usual process to try and twist logic, but I’m sick of bad news. Heck, I’m sick of all news that’s not outwardly positive. 

The doctor hasn’t come in yet. I’m quite fond of him, and I usually look forward to Tuesday banter with him before another treatment. You have to focus on the small lighthearted things, buried in the bleak. We sit side by side, both on our phones looking for a distraction.

This is every other Tuesday. We both wish it wasn’t. But, we both know we will do whatever it takes to have a tomorrow.