Magpie to the Morning

Sunrise 9/26, Piedmont Park, Atlanta, Georgia

In the Spring of 2021, I had an umbilical hernia that needed repair. I got a referral to the surgeon, did my pre-appointment and didn’t make it past eight as I counted backwards from 10.

I woke up and the doctor was sitting beside me.

“Did everything go OK?” I asked.

“Yes, as far as the surgery goes. But while I was in there, I found a large neoplastic mass in your abdomen. Probably a lymphoma. You’re scheduled for a CT scan next week.”

And with that, we were off to the cancer races!

I got busy, as I do, and had the scans, a biopsy, bloodwork and fought my way to the front of the line with the oncologist I wanted. In 6 short weeks, we cleaned out the basement, Shane moved in, sold his house and I started chemo. Not just any chemo, but the R-EPOCH regimen, a fun little mixture of chemos, steroids and antibiotics. Treatment was six 96-hour drips, requiring me to be admitted for five days every third week.

All of that is intimidating and a pain in the ass. Scary even. Then, when you learn that Diffuse Larger B-Cell Lymphoma is always categorized as Stage IV, the enormity of the task confronting you becomes clear.

But I did it. I packed my bag every third Monday and scheduled around my time on the Winship Cancer tower’s ninth floor, reserved for special chemos and bone marrow transplants – not quite boy-in-the-bubble stuff, but close (there were two rooms for that kind of isolation).

I tolerated the drugs fairly well with only a passing moment of nausea after the fifth cycle. My hair fell out in clumps. I became fatigued. But otherwise, I was relatively unscathed. I maintained my weight. I ate what I wanted. I missed a bad wave of COVID. I made my stays into little breaks and enjoyed my mornings listening to new music and walking the “circuit.” I never threw up. No mouth sores, no diarrhea, nada.

Except for my vision. During the first two chemo cycles, I was given a spinal column injection of methatrexate, a small dose designed to prevent the cancer from crossing the blood/brain barrier. My optic nerves became inflamed and I have permanent visual degradation in about 50% of my right eye and 15% of the left. Toxic optic neuropathy for those following along.

I had another PET scan in March, 2022 and it came back relatively clear, enough so that the oncologist told me “we’ll declare you cancer free when you come for your 6-month repeat scan.”