amifostine and woody allen

sunday, december 15, 2006

my hands shake and tingle. my ears scream. my stomach flutters. i try to ignore, and to enjoy being back at my apartment, on my couch, with no constantly beeping IV machine, no nurses coming in once-an-hour to take vital signs... a multitude of insignificant but comforting specks of control over my environment combine to make all the difference.

yet more unquantifiable risks to be weighed against fear. should we give me amifostine, which supposedly may help protect my ears from long-term permanent hearing loss from the cisplatin? the mechanism by which it supposedly protects sound-sensitive cells from being killed by the chemo sounds suspiciously non-specific. why wouldn't it prevent the cancer cells from being knocked off as well, thereby nullifying the chemo's intended effect? is there some kind of differential effect based on dosage? how do we know what that dose is in my case? this drug is not usually used for people in my situation. why not? because we mostly give this kind of harsh chemotherapy to older guys who are going deaf anyway?

i let myself be convinced by unconvincing arguments. once again, trust had to be placed in the individual oncologist's experience over the data, breaking the "rules" of how we are taught to approach medicine. once again, i am reminded of how different the whole system looks from the patient's side. statistics become practically meaningless when it's your own life you're talking about.

whatever the long-term effects or lack thereof, the amifostine was horrible. while it would be easy to blame a surreptitious trip to the taco truck (from which my oncologist caught me coming back, wag of the finger), the timing of the misery points squarely at the drug. starting fifteen minutes after the injection, i spent all afternoon last thursday retching my brains out, before being sent home to three more days of nausea. i contend that my visit to the taco truck merely made the whole business less pleasant than it would have been had i, for instance, been eating ginger snaps for lunch.

suffering is highly overrated, my friends. i really think i could develop all the empathy i needed in life with about 24 hours of misery. four days on end is really overkill.

many months ago, we bought tickets to see woody allen and his new orleans jazz band at UCLA's royce hall. i don't have a particularly close affiliation with woody allen, nor with new orleans jazz music, but i just felt like i had to go. despite the queasiness and the muffle-headed, fuzzy hypersensitivity, it needed to happen. it was a statement to myself, an affirmation. i made it. months ago, i planned on being around and going to this show, and despite all of the crap that has happened to me since then, dammit, i'm still here! blow, woody, blow!