covid

I carried a watermelon.

Rachel Roman, , , 8 Comments
Club Med.

May 21, 2020

My hospital phone rang and startled me. Hospital phones are funny and have a curly cord and big buttons. User friendly. Yet somehow I managed to hang up on the caller twice before figuring out how to answer this jitterbug. It was a med student in his hospital rotation. So I gathered, he was a low talker (Seinfeld) and had a very thick accent. He went through a litany of questions regarding my symptoms and any changes I had noticed since yesterday. This must be the equivalent of fry duty at McDonalds. I worked at McDonalds one summer in high school and was put on fry duty for a short staffed busy Saturday shift. I left that full day after dropping a thousand fry baskets, covered in grease, and ready to get promoted to the drive-thru. Back to the med student. He was kind and empathetic but I’m sure he was ready to start using his stethoscope.

Today was my Mom’s birthday. Happy Birthday Mom! Ya kid’s got cancer. I’m sure she would have preferred a gift card. I don’t think we will ever forget this strange, coincidental, bond of circumstance and timing. More on that later…

By mid morning the resident doctor came in to talk with me. He was tall and handsome and I was more concentrated on who of my friends I might be able to set him up with. Focus Rachel. You have cancer. “So how big is this thing?” I had seen the CT image of my chest in the ER and it was jarring. Once I was oriented with what the black areas were (air) and the white areas (bone) and the fuzzy areas (heart and esophagus) my eyes locked in on the BIG blob that was my tumor. “I think I need a visual, like a vegetable size reference,” I said. What are we really working with here doc. My brain immediately visualized a grapefruit. I feel like that’s the terminal size. Death by citrus. The doctor paused and looked back at the portable work station computer screen in my room. With his head tilted, he seemed to be doing some internal math and turned back to face me. “Its the size of a medium sized watermelon.” Death by melon. “Wow. That’s big.” That is all I could say. I really don’t remember much of our conversation after that.

A few days later I was talking to one of my dear friends. “He picked a watermelon? That is the least standardized size fruit,” she said. I laughed. It was true. And funny. There are mini watermelons, and hybrid watermelons, seedless watermelons, giant 4th of July drip off your chin, feed a whole BBQ sized watermelons. Joel helped me with some calculations and moving forward we decided that a cantaloupe was a much better consistent visual reference.

The rest of that day was bright and blurry all at the same time. I was waiting for a biopsy of this melon and they were doing their best to rush it. But Covid again was making scheduling difficult and they decided that I needed a negative Covid test before proceeding. If you ever wondered what that test feels like, well you actually probably don’t. Take a long toothpick and put a bristly toilet brush on the end of it, jam it up your nose until the back of your brain feels like it needs to sneeze. May come out with some grey matter on it. That about sums it up.

My jitterbug phone rang late in the afternoon and it was a voice I didn’t recognize and he sounded rushed. “Hi Rachel, this is your oncologist, I’m on my way to see you, I’ll be there shortly.” Had I brushed my teeth? I immediately thought about things that didn’t matter, like my gray roots from two months of no hair color. Was I wearing a bra? Fifteen minutes later and he was in my room, tall and efficient. And again the computer screen in front of me lit up with the CT images of the unwanted melon. Which was actually sitting in between my real, God given, potential money makin’ melons. I jumped right in. “So you think it is cancer? Is there a chance it could be something else?” He paused, looked down and then looked me straight in the eye. “I could look over there and see a duck. It has white feathers and orange feet and a beak and is quacking at me. But I can’t confirm that it’s a duck until a veterinarian tells me.” Oh god now we are doing barnyard references. First non-standardized size fruit, now ducks. But I knew what that meant. Precisely. “I need the biopsy to confirm it, but we are looking at cancer. Very likely lymphoma.”

‘I carried a watermelon.’

Back in December 2019 I ran in the St. Jude Children’s Hospital Half Marathon in Memphis, TN. This was my 3rd time doing this race. While some may consider this a form of self-inflicted torture, somehow the charity and the experience have kept me signing up. (I hear you non-runners. I am somewhat of a ‘shuffle runner’ myself.) The week of the race I woke up with a terrible and odd chest cold. An angry cough with sidecar of chest pains and it was socked in like a bad storm. How was I going to travel there and run the race with this devil raging inside my chest? I had so many thoughts of disappointment – in myself, in the timing, in the letting down all the good people who donated to support me and St. Jude. In the end I went. I just had to and I’m stubborn. If you didn’t already know that about me. I traveled solo, and woke early the morning of the race ready to rock. This event is one of the most inspiring experiences. About halfway, the race course winds its way through the St. Jude hospital campus. The staff, and patients and families that are able, come out to cheer on the runners. These brave kids – bald, weary, fighting – usher you through a half mile stretch with signs and bells and cheers and ENERGY. It is emotional to say the least. Little did I know that this beast of a chest cold was the golf ball. That grew into the grapefruit. That grew into a non-standardized size melon. So to reference one of my favorite movies Dirty Dancing, ‘I carried a watermelon.’ For 13.1 miles. I haven’t settled on the meaning of this sequence of events or reconciled that these two things were indeed strange bedfellows. I ran a race for cancer research while I unknowingly had cancer growing inside me.

Hello.

Rachel Roman, 18 Comments

So begins the adventure of telling my most recent story. This is a chapter I never thought I would write. But one that I am embracing and going to figure out as I go along. Writing has always been a secret love of mine. One I put on the shelf a long time ago. At an age when you think things are dumb and that you aren’t any good at them. Well the branch has been shook and I’m picking up the apples. Some are bruised. Let’s see what happens.

I’ll be taking the next few days to recount the past four weeks to get to the present…..

May 20, 2020

I went to my doctor to figure out what in the world was going on with me. Two plus months of quarantine and I thought I had a lingering pinched nerve in my neck. But my breathing had recently become labored, a rough cough took hold, and of course….I thought I had Covid 19. Honestly I was sure of it. When you convince yourself of something it becomes true, right? What else could it be. The whole world was just waiting to get it. And I had it.

By that afternoon I was questioning my self-credentialed MD when an x-ray revealed a ‘BIG mass’ in my chest. I had left my primary doc’s office to have blood work and a chest x-ray to ‘rule out the big stuff’. I can’t say that my nerves weren’t a bit on edge as I waited in the changing cubby outside the x-ray room thinking of Covid, cancer, death, brain tumors – all the ‘big stuff’. I put my top back on and the nurse came in twice to apologize for the wait. At that point I was mildly sweating, analyzing my own breathing patterns, and Googling Make-A-Wish to see if I could be the first 43 year old to get to meet Mickey Mouse…..

“Your doctor is on the phone, she would like to talk to you.” Oh lordy Moses. “Rachel, they found a BIG mass in your chest. I’m so sorry. I need you to go to the hospital to have a CT scan so we can see what this is.”

I hung up the phone with tears in my eyes. Totally peeved about this damn Covid mask and my COPD style breathing. This. Is. Not. Happening.

It was a long walk out of the hospital. I am surprised I remembered where I parked. This. Is. Not. Happening. I called Joel and broke the news. This. Is. Not. Happening. I started my car and backed out of my spot and was half way home on the highway when I decided to call my Mom. She’s been through the ringer and back with her own health, and I would always scold her for holding back and not telling me bad news or how her doctors visits went.

She took a deep breath and 2 hours later met me in the parking lot of the hospital ER. She and my Pop just waiting there to let me know ‘we got you’. They were both wearing oversized plastic rainbow rings – the kind they put on cupcakes and give out at themed birthday parties. I was like Mom, I’m straight! LOL. She put one on my finger and said this is a symbol of hope.

Covid has made a wanker of everything ‘normal’. I’m not sure what normal really means these days or if I even want to be associated with it, but when you are carrying a ‘BIG mass’ in your chest and you have to go to the ER, normal works. Joel coming in with me works. Mom and Dad in the waiting room works. But nothing was normal and I waved goodbye to my parents and was escorted in by a nurse. Alone.

Secret potty and my rainbow ring.

My ER nurse was named Jackie. Nurse Jackie. Somehow I end up relating most situations in my life to a scene from a movie or an episode of Seinfeld. Reference earlier paragraph for my thoughts on ‘normal’. Nurse Jackie was young and sweet and not on any drugs to my knowledge. And she was better than a flight attendant handing out peanuts when it came to showing me the secret ER potty. Did you know every ER room has a secret potty? Thank god it was only for #1. But a #2 would have made for a very funny story. More on Nurse Jackie later…..

Wheeling into the CT scan was pretty surreal. I gave two Top Gun Maverick thumbs up salutes to Nurse Jackie and she gave ’em right back to me. The ceiling of the CT room had three graphic panels over the fluorescent lights. It was a garden scene with a pond. It looked like a hybrid of a basement Bob Ross painting and homemade stained glass hobby project, but I’ll give them a solid C for effort in the anti-anxiety department. Can you imagine the thoughts that people have had looking up at those lights? Am I dying? Am I cured? I was actually more concerned about if I could hold my breath at the right times during the scan and getting scolded by the wizard running the machine. Rule followers worry about these things.

Nurse Jackie came back in to my ER room and said her shift was ending and she was sorry that I had to be there alone and that she would keep in touch with the doctor about my scan results. Her concern was real and it touched me. I thanked her for showing me how to use the secret potty and she refilled my water cup with more crushed ice. Something about crushed ice. It is far superior than cubed. When in a foam cup. It lasts forever and becomes the delightful soothing slush crush of a snow cone without any juice. Sorry Earth. I am a responsible sworn-in citizen of the planet and have a reusable water bottle. I promise.

By the time the doctor came back to my room I had completed a totally random text conversation with my ex husband. He was redoing our old kitchen and sending me progress pics. It was oddly calming to me to have this exchange. I felt some guilt in not telling him where I was, but what would be the point. I’d meet my fate soon enough. Let’s talk about paint colors. Agreeable Gray goes with EVERYTHING.

“I’m so sorry.” He opened the radiology report on the computer screen in front of me. “The mass is LARGE and is causing significant pressure on your heart and lungs. You have fluid on both. Your left lung is not at full function. The radiologist indicates that this is lymphoma.” My Covid COPD fish out of water breathing shallowed even further than before. The doctor continued. “If you were my wife or daughter I would admit you immediately. We need to biopsy and confirm the radiologist’s findings. I’m so sorry you are here by yourself.” Thank you Covid. You continue to be the turd in the punch bowl of 2020.

My hospital room had a view and my primary doc had encouraged me to pack a bag. I navigated putting on some PJs while wheeling my IV around this foreign space and then I started dialing. Joel first, he has my heart. Mom and Dad second, I knew they could wait a little longer and would have the most questions. I felt an odd sense of peace as I made those calls. I’m getting answers. Just not the ones I wanted. We all absorbed the shock together and we all felt it separately. I don’t know how much my Mom cried that night after we hung up the phone and I don’t know how I was able to stay so calm.

I am not sure you could classify what I did that night as sleeping. They wake you up frequently to check your vitals, take your temp, take your blood, make every control in the room beep. All solid reminders that you are not in your own bed with your own pup snuggled up at your toes, and not wearing bright yellow standard hospital issued gripper socks. At some point in the early morning I sat up from this fog and looked over at the window. My overnight bag was sitting on the couch and next to it was another bag that I didn’t recognize. Of course my first thought was THIEF! Wait, it was an additional bag. My bag was still there. Jesus Rachel get it together. I got out of bed and tried not to rip the tangled vacuum cord of my IV out of my arm. Wheeling over to ‘the bag’ that the intruder had left, I was so curious. On top of the bag was a folded sheet of printer paper turned into a homemade card. Nurse Jackie. Tears welled in my eyes knowing she really did feel bad that she was going off shift without knowing what my CT results were and knowing that I was there by myself facing some serious unknowns. The bag had a warm fuzzy blanket, chapstick, lotion, a notebook and pen and her handwritten note telling me it was all going to be ok. Thank you Nurse Jackie. Nurses are very special people.