During the two weeks of my radiation therapy, Annette did quite a bit of reading about the chemotherapy that I would be facing. Supposedly, there was a great deal of nausea and discomfort connected with most powerful drugs. She had read that marijuana could be used to alleviate a great deal of this discomfort and had been legalized in certain states for this purpose. She talked to the doctor, who confirmed this, but he said that Texas was not one of the states. She was determined to try anything to help make my treatment a little easier. However, I was adamant about not smoking marijuana cigarettes. I had gone through such a traumatic experience in giving up smoking two years before that I was determined not to do anything that could undo this effort.
I knew nothing about marijuana. I had never in my life smoked it. I had never tried it in any form.
The doctor said that if we had a way of getting some, well, it might help. One of our daughters found some. We decided that a marijuana brownie would be it. A doctor called a doctor friend of his in California and asked what the formula was for making magic brownies. We got his recipe. Annette and our daughter stayed up until 1 A.M. before my first chemotherapy treatment, trying to make a batch of brownies. She had to clean the stuff, but she didn’t know what she was doing. She decided to put a lot of thick icing on it to disguise the taste of the marijuana. Annette told me later, “I thought if there was a lot of icing on it, you wouldn’t taste anything.” It was so rich, it was terrible.
At seven the next morning, I reported to the chemotherapy ward. The bed I was assigned to was in a room with a dozen beds, six perpendicular to each long wall, with about five feet between them. There were curtains that could be drawn around a bed for privacy, but they were kept open most of the time. The bright lights made resting difficult and revealed the need for painting and repairs. A bottle of fluid hanging on an IV stand next to each bed was connected by a rubber tube to each patient. The moans and groans along with the sounds of retching and the smell made it seem like a snake pit. When I walked into it, the thought of an extended period of this made my knees weak and my stomach squeamish before even starting.
A lovely nurse patiently explained what I would be going through. She gave us, in writing, a detailed description of each of the four drugs I would be receiving, including what each was, what each would accomplish, the schedule by which each would be given to me and what effects each drug would have.
Chemotherapy is technically therapy by the use of chemicals. When a person takes two aspirins, he is taking a form of chemotherapy. While I was to receive chemotherapy from 7 A.M. until 7 P.M. some days and 11 P.M. other days, most of the time I was receiving water or a saline solution intravenously. The chemicals are so strong that it is necessary to flush them through your system. A great deal of water, therefore, is given before and after the chemicals.
With the explanations out of the way, it came time to start this dreaded treatment. Before starting, I ate a quarter of a “special” brownie that my wife and daughter (Nancy) so meticulously prepared. I took one large bite, tasted it, forced myself to swallow it and promptly vomited. The icing was so rich and the marijuana tasted so awful, that I can honestly say this was worse than any of the chemotherapy that ensued. For months, I would wake up with nightmares of that taste. To this day, just the thought of that brownie makes my stomach queasy. So much for my one and only experience with marijuana!
Chemotherapy started. Annette and Nancy sat by my side throughout these four long days. Watching me and my fellow patients continuously getting sick and suffering was very distressing for them. They felt so helpless in not being able to ease my discomfort. At night, I was so weak that it took the two of them to get me to the car and to the hotel across the street.
On the brighter side of things, practicing the positive mental attitude I had read about, I was grateful for this sickness. If these drugs could make this big strong body so violently ill, think what they would be doing to those weak little cancer cells. It really helped me think my cancer away. The discomfort itself could actually be compared to the sickness you have from drinking too much. When I was younger and had had too much to drink on New Year’s Eve, I felt the same way. The difference is that this went on for four days and left me continuously weaker. One of the great times of my life was to be leaving that hell hole on Friday night and flying back to my home in Kansas City, even though I had to be taken to the airplane in a wheelchair.
Little did I know what I had in store for me. Even though the chemotherapy had completely destroyed my appetite, I was looking forward to three weeks of rest and relaxation with no treatments. That is how long I had to recuperate before surgery. As weak as I was, the next few days I got progressively weaker. Chemotherapy had completely distorted my sense of taste and smell. My favorite foods no longer had any appeal to me. Certain odors that I had been faintly aware of, and had tolerated for years, suddenly became intolerable. Betty, our cook, would fix something in the kitchen, and even though I was in our bedroom at the opposite end of the house, I couldn’t stand the smell. We had a stand of dried flowers, and I couldn’t take their odor. I kept asking why Betty was burning the coffee. I would take one sip of it, and it was the worst-tasting stuff.
I guess I got kind of mean about things. I was very demanding. I didn’t realize that my taste was distorted. I thought the foods weren’t being cooked right, and I got very angry about it.
I was always cold. If it was 75 degrees, I would be cold. I’d turn off the air-conditioner, and everybody else would suffer. I didn’t know whether my blood was flowing, or what was going on.
One of the incredible things about the whole experience is how precise the doctors were in knowing exactly what was going to happen to me. You’d think it was guesswork, but it wasn’t. They said I would have a sore throat a certain number of days after I got home. I did. It was the worst sore throat anyone ever had. It was like a charley horse you get in your leg, except this was a cramp in my throat. There was no way anything was going to get down my throat. Betty babied me for days. She would make things like a soft-boiled egg and give me a half teaspoonful. I’d somehow get it down, and she’d clap her hands and yell, “Hallelujah!”
At first, I couldn’t even swallow a drop of water. Betty and Annette tried baby food and canned food supplements. For two days, I couldn’t take anything. Sometimes Annette had to literally jam food down my throat. I knew that Annette wanted me to eat, and I knew it was important for me to eat, and I was upset because I couldn’t. I was losing weight. I knew that if the radiation had done this to the healthy cells of my throat, it really must have played havoc with the weaker cancer cells.
Slowly but surely the pain and nausea subsided and my strength started returning. However, my strength did not come like Samson’s. Along with the return of my strength came the loss of my hair.
Though this had been foretold, I was totally unprepared for the reality of being transformed into a Yul Brynner or a Telly Savalas. It started off with a few hairs clinging to my comb, then more appeared on my pillow each morning, until finally it came out in huge clumps. Within a week, I did not have a hair on my entire body — including eyebrows, arms, legs, everywhere. Surprisingly enough, it did not bother me nearly as much as it bothered everyone else who had to look at me.
My youngest daughter, Linda, was engaged to get married five weeks after my surgery. She was thoughtful enough to volunteer to postpone the date, but I was determined to let nothing change her plans. My wife asked me as a favor to have a toupee made, thinking it would make me feel better about my appearance. I went along with the idea, knowing it would make her happy; I truly didn’t care. Even though I was to be bald for the next year, the only time I wore the toupee was during the wedding festivities.
The doctor’s forecast on my recuperation period was incredibly accurate. I felt physically better each day. The night I arrived in Houston, I felt so terrific that I took my wife and daughters out for a fun evening on the town. We found the nicest restaurant in Houston. I don’t know how many bottles of wine the four of us drank. We didn’t know if we would ever be able to eat and drink like this again. We went back to the hotel, and the four of us got in our king-sized bed together. Barbara, thirty, Nancy, twenty-seven, and the two of us. We giggled and laughed. We were like four little kids. We hugged and kissed. It was like trying to erase from our minds any thought of the impending surgery and possible consequences. We succeeded.