Chapter 18. New York City, December 2010, Chemo Crisis

Saturday May 20, 2023

Hello Beloved Reader,

Chapter 18 is below.

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Copyright © 2023 by Camilla Sanderson
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or reprinted without the author’s written permission.

Chapter 18. New York City, December 2010, Chemo Crisis

While Jamie traverses the chemotherapy journey, I take a deep dive into cooking macrobiotic food. Cooking is something I can do. It satisfies a deep-seated need in me to take action. Jamie’s mother’s cousin Jimmy, a macrobiotic cooking counsellor, provides me with instructions and a list of ingredients to buy. One morning, with a warm winter coat and boots that will survive the city streets icy slush, I walk the eight blocks North to our neighborhood Whole Foods on the South side of Union Square, to stock up on macro essentials: burdock root, daikon, sesame seeds, umeboshi plums, shiitake mushrooms, short-grain brown rice. 

Back in my sixty-square-foot kitchen with a gas stove, I measure out 1 1/4 cups of water, one cup of brown rice, and a pinch of sea salt, into a second-hand pressure-cooker I recently bought on eBay. Jimmy told me that a pressure cooker creates a different kind of energy in cooked food—an energy he said will serve Jamie’s body in shrinking the tumor, and in healing from the collateral damage inflicted by the chemotherapy. I’ve never used a pressure-cooker before and feel a bit intimidated to try it for the first time. 

Thankfully I don’t blow up the apartment. Plus, with a pressure cooker, brown rice only takes seventeen minutes to cook, versus the forty-five minutes it takes in a regular saucepan. And it tastes delicious—the texture is more tender. I make it for our lunch along with another Jimmy-recommended food—kimpira: carrots and burdock root cut into matchsticks, sautéed in a little water until tender. For more ideas, he also recommended I get a copy of, The Self-Healing Cookbook: Whole Foods to Balance Body, Mind and Moods. Maybe I’ll make some Miso soup too… and I can sauté some mushrooms in a pan with a little olive oil. It feels so good to create all these nourishing foods for Jamie, who is happily open to, and interested in, eating macrobiotic food. But he’s not always the most appreciative patient. 

“What’s that smell? It stinks! Is that mushrooms?” he yells out from the couch in the living room. “I’ve told you a million times that my sense of smell is so much more sensitive since I started chemo!” 

I can hear the frustration in his voice. It’s matched by my own. He has always hated mushrooms, but since Jimmy said they’re excellent for helping the body heal from cancer, Jamie told me he’d be more open to trying them.

“Sorry!” I yell back, disgruntled. I understand that one of the side effects from chemotherapy is an increased sensitivity to smells, but I’m repeatedly surprised by just how sensitive. I walk into the living room and open the window a crack to allow the smell to escape. A stream of iced air simultaneously seeps into the apartment. I stand there waiting for the smell to dissipate so I can close the window again, thinking to myself that Jamie is being a little shit. I’m not trying to hurt him, I’m trying to help him heal. 

Continually being in the caregiver role created some corrosive moments in our partnership. Most of the time though, he’s too exhausted from the chemotherapy to be emotional. Plus his doctor prescribed Lorazepam to stop the nausea that is so often experienced with chemo—and another benefit of the Lorazepam: it’s an anti-anxiety medication. 

I consider it a good night if he has a Lorazepam and I have a glass of red wine. 

~

Two points of peak anxiety hit us on Jamie’s journey through cancer. The first was after the biopsy: the seven days of waiting for his diagnosis, when I thought he was going to die. The second point came after he began chemotherapy; during the third week.

Jamie’s doctor had warned us that if his fever ever spikes, he must go to the emergency room immediately. The doctor told us that in the beginning stages of their trials years ago, for these particular drugs, they’d lost a few patients to neutropenic fevers as those patients didn’t seek medical intervention fast enough. Of course that scared us silly, so we monitor Jamie’s temperature diligently. 

One afternoon, two weeks after he finished the first five-consecutive-days of chemotherapy, his temperature does spike. I read the thermometer: 101F. My stomach clenches. Sweat dampens the armpits of my black wool turtleneck. We need to take immediate action. 

“I’ll call the doctor,” I say. “I’ll tell him your fever has spiked and we’re headed up to the emergency room now.” Jamie nods, his face ashen. 

We’re out the door in five minutes. We hug our coats close to our bodies against the bitter wind funneling down our city street. I hail a taxi. Jamie staggers into the cab. Within 30 minutes we arrive at MSKCC. We go inside and follow the signs to the emergency room. My eyes widen when we arrive.

Are you kidding me? How can there be so many emergencies with cancer patients? 

The room isn’t large; maybe twenty-five seats. Most of them full. The space seems dark, shadowy, it’s charcoal gray in color. A sterile, almost antiseptic smell slithers through the thick air. A sense of despair infuses the walls and furniture. A patient lies waiting on a gurney just outside in the hallway. It’s as though a heaviness oppresses every heartbeat. We find two empty chairs. Jamie sits and I go up to the front desk. 

“My husband has a neutropenic fever,” I say to the nurse with a shaky voice. 

“I understand,” she says. “I’ll put him on the urgent care list. But you’ll need to wait until we call him.” A part of me wants to scream at her, I need you to help my husband NOW!  This part of me doesn’t care that other people need help too. But my rational self does not want to alienate these nurses whose help we need, and who are simply doing their jobs, so I go back to my seat. 

But the frantic nature of our situation continues to simmer. I need to take some kind of immediate action to ensure he gets urgent care. I realize I’d put our thermometer in my pocket. I take his temperature again and I go back to the front desk. With full-on intensity, I tell them, “This is his temperature now. My husband’s doctor told us that he had patients die because of a neutropenic fever.” Beads of sweat run down my forehead. It’s as though my body is imbued with a restrained fury. I want to grab her by the shoulders and shake her, scream at her. She acknowledges hearing me, but other patients still wait too. If I wasn’t so afraid and desperate I’d feel sorry for her.

I go back to where Jamie sits, his body slumped in the chair. He bends forward and puts his head in his hands. He’s so quiet. My internal scream intensifies. I know he’s suffering and I can’t get them to help him any faster. Every ten minutes, I take his temperature, then go back to the front desk to tell them again. I repeat this over and over, until I’m sure they want to strangle me.

Time takes on a different dimension. The hours distend. My cortisol levels spike as high as Mont Blanc. I’m impatient by nature, but I’ve never before experienced such pervasive angst while waiting. Jamie seems too weak to put up any fight.

Three and a half hours after we arrived, the nurse calls out Jamie’s name. I exhale as though I’d been holding my breath the entire time. We stand. Jamie’s legs wobble. My heart breaks. The nurse leads us to a large patient-care room and draws the pale blue curtains around us. She asks Jamie to lie on the half-inclined bed and, finally, gives him an IV antibiotic and a Neulasta injection to help bring up his white-blood-cell count. Tears prick my eyes. My body flops into a chair near him. I just want to be still and let the relief sink in.

Again it’s time to wait. But at least this waiting is after he’s received the drugs he needs. I write another e-mail on my iPad to Rob, Jamie’s older brother, to let him know what’s going on. Within a few minutes I receive a reply. I read it aloud to Jamie. “Rob writes that everyone is sending their prayers, healing energy, you name it, they’re beaming love to us.” Jamie offers a shaky smile. My heart expands knowing that people we love are with us in spirit and sending us their love and light.

Looking back, I see now, that a large part of how I survived Jamie’s whole cancer journey was through the emails I sent and received. All the emotions I found difficult to process at the time, I typed into words on a screen to share with loved ones. Talking on the phone during certain critical times would have been too difficult. I would have just burst into tears. And there was no time for my tears when I had to focus, and keep it together to support Jamie through the hell of chemotherapy his body endured.

Just after 11:00 p.m. they move him up to a regular hospital room. I sit by his bed and write to another friend who has been through breast cancer. He's sleeping now, so his body is busy fighting the infection. Not only Jamie’s family but also all the Sanderson women are beaming him healing energy, and we're a potent force, especially in unison! ;-)

The nurses keep coming in to check his temperature. Two hours later, around 1:00 a.m., a nurse tells us that his fever has broken. Jamie and I lock eyes, relief and exhaustion flowing between us. Within minutes Jamie is on the verge of falling back asleep. I try to sleep in the chair, but I can’t get comfortable. I need to go home to sleep in my own bed. I tell Jamie and he understands.

The taxi driver picks me up at 1:30 a.m. He chats away to me as he drives us downtown. It feels like he’s trying to cheer me up—I guess being picked up in front of a hospital in the wee hours of the morning indicates to him that I’ve been with someone I care about, who is sick. We meander down Fifth Avenue, passing the Rockefeller Christmas tree that pulses with lights—red, orange, gold, silver, green, blue, purple. The crowning, brightly lit white star draws my eyes up to the top of its magnificent stature. Driving past Sacks Fifth Avenue, small white lights create patterns that look like falling snowflakes on the picturesque window displays. Large, bright-red, shiny glass balls, surrounded by oversized plastic green holly, decorate the entrance to the Peninsula hotel. White fairy lights wrapped around sidewalk trees emit a soft, mystical glow. I feel like I’m in a scene from a movie. 

Time takes on a different dimension again. The moment stretches out through the past and into the future. A strong and vibrant energy pulses through me as I glimpse the rest of the world continuing to exist outside our medical drama. It’s as though a depth of clarity envelopes me. I sense into a softening… as though I’m a “spiritual being having a human experience.” Comfort, liberation, and freedom sweep through me all at once, like I am in Flow with life. Completely at peace. Deep in my heart I know that on some level, the universe is unfolding as it should—another of my favorite lines from The Desiderata. We have survived this emergency, and while Jamie still has more chemotherapy to endure, I sense the end of this part of the journey is near.

The taxi pulls up right in front of our apartment on 10^th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. I pay the driver and thank him. The cold, sharp air tries to pry through my winter coat. I find my key, unlock the brownstone’s front door, walk up the flight of stairs to the parlor level, unlock our apartment’s nine-foot-tall parlor-level front door, close it behind me, and collapse onto our sofa chair. I sink into its soft, downy cushions. Every fiber of my being is happy to be home. Exhausted from the crisis and agitation, and relieved that Jamie’s fever had broken, I sleep peacefully in my own bed.

The next morning, the phone rings, waking me up. It’s Jamie. 

“The doctors took an x-ray and told me it showed unexpectedly good news,” he says. I wonder if he can hear my heart beating so loudly. 

“The tumor is already shrinking.” His voice, full of emotion, elicits my tears. 

It’s as though through time and space, I sense our hearts beat in coherence.

~

It’s in reflection that I can feel gratitude when I remember how privileged we both have been throughout Jamie’s cancer journey: we had health insurance through my work; we had access to the best cancer treatment Western medicine can offer; our relationship was strong enough to endure the crisis; we had just hiked the hundred miles of the Tour du Mont Blanc so his body was strong and fit to help it deal with the complete annihilation of chemotherapy, before his body was then able to heal and come back to equanimity. And it’s in reflection that I can connect with empathy for those other patients in the cancer emergency room and compassion for all the health care workers doing their best to help those in need. 

At the time, all I cared about was that Jamie didn’t die. 

Click for chapter 19.