The anxiety of physical distancing while undergoing chemotherapy
The doctors were not kidding around when they said three days after my first chemotherapy appointment, I would feel the effects.
My family and I were eating dinner Sunday night. We’d ordered in some pizza. Greasy foods are not a good mix with chemo, so I took off all the pepperoni and sausage and patted it down with a napkin to get off the excess oil.
I had just been thinking about how well my body was reacting to my first chemo session and weeksworth of daily radiation appointments. I was tired, but my new pill regimen of Compazine and Zofran for nausea and Xanax for anxiety was keeping my stomach in check and helping me fall asleep a few hours faster than I had been.
But I soon found myself leaping off the couch and running for the bathroom. For the next hour and a half, I sat on the toilet in pain, as it felt like everything that had ever been in my stomach drained out of it.
My 15-year-old son Michael didn’t come out much from his room that evening. When he did he was hunched over and staring at the ground, not saying a lot. I think it was hard on him to see me so sick. He’s pretty sensitive and I’ve noticed he tends to internalize the pain I’m feeling.
I’m normally the push-through-it, don’t-let-things-show kind of mom. But I can’t do that right now. I have to lean into all of this discomfort or else I’ll never make it through the treatment.
It doesn’t help that none of us get any real relief from my cervical cancer or the coronavirus these days. This week, it’s really set in just how challenging it is that we can’t actually go out and do something that would completely take our minds off all of this.
Lately, I’ve noticed myself becoming more anxious when I go out and someone gets close to me. My heart will start beating really fast and I’ll start sweating. Then the fact that I feel anxious about being close to people makes me even more anxious.
When I’m at my chemo and radiation appointments, I have to sit in a few different waiting rooms. If there are a lot of other people in there with me and they sit too close, I find myself making up excuses to get out of my chair. I’ll fill up an already full water glass. Anything just to move away from everyone.
I wish I could just sit down and talk with some of the people there with me. It would be a relief to get out of my head for a few moments, even if it’s just a polite conversation about the weather.
I have started to get to know some of the nurses, which I’ve enjoyed. Especially during my radiation appointments, when I see the same staff every day.
Although they haven’t been able to get out of the habit of asking whether I did anything fun the day before. Sometimes I tell them about my exciting day getting the mail or the newspaper and walking into a room in my house that I haven’t been in for a while. Other times I just chuckle.
One nurse was telling me about how she didn’t realize the hours for our local grocery store in Bellevue, Washington, had been cut. She had gotten off a long shift at 10pm the night before, and planned to pick up some flowers for her husband’s birthday the next day. She had to go home empty-handed.
I can’t imagine how upsetting that must have been. Working hours and hours, and still finding energy to stop off at the grocery store to surprise your husband, only to find its lights off and its employees already gone.
On Thursday morning, after my husband dropped me off at my second chemo appointment, he texted to say he was taking the kids on a drive. Before I could respond with my many concerns, he explained that they were just going to go through a drive-thru, nothing more.
I made it through my four-hour appointment listening to some of my favorite musicals and part of an audio book called Lakewood by Megan Giddings, about medical experimentation. I texted with my grandmother, who’s almost 90 and lives in Idaho with my grandfather. She told me about how she feels like a prisoner because her kids, who live nearby, bring them everything she needs and instructed them to stay inside.
When I was finally finished, I found my husband and kids all waiting in the car at the hospital’s parking garage. They ended up driving about 20 minutes to Issaquah for McDonald’s. It’s certainly not the closest junk food, but my husband was desperate to take them “out”.
It was a nice surprise to see them all there. But the very first thing I asked was whether any of them got out of the car. The kids had gotten out in the parking garage to look over the side for just a few moments. So as soon as we got home, I sprayed Lysol on the bottom of their shoes.