Chapter 42
Chapter40: Cancer Treatment
Sedona’s POV
The treatment began on a Tuesday.
Dr. Mitchell sat with me for two hours the morning before the treatment started, just the two
of us, with Cameron in the corner being very quiet, not saying, which told me he already knew
what Frank was going to say to me, but he wanted me to hear it from him directly.
He walked me through everything that had been going on; the restaging, the new scans, the probability that we were looking at stage four rather than three. The clinical trial where he managed to get me into, through asking a colleague. The twenty-four weeks. The thirty-one
percent that I had based on probability.
I’d expected the numbers to be worse than what Chicago had told me. I’d felt the progression in me, I knew I was getting worse, I didn’t need a doctor to tell me that. These were things
you just knew, in the way you feel things that are happening inside your own body when
you’re honest enough to pay attention.
that
The bleeding episode in the hotel had told me something was escalating and my time was running low. I just didn’t point it out because I didn’t want Cameron to argue with me on this.
I listened to Frank explain it all, and I thought about Nick, and I thought about everything that I had experienced this past few weeks.
“Thirty-one percent,” I said.
“Yes p>
“That’s not nothing p>
Frank smiled, just slightly. “No. It’s not nothing p>
“Then we do the trial.” I looked at Cameron, who was still being quiet in his corner, as if, if he kept still enough, he would become one with the furniture and picture frames there.
“Stop holding your breath, Cam. We’re going to try p>
He exhaled, and the sound of it held about a week’s worth of contained fear. He had been
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< Cancer Treatment
worried that I would change my mind about fighting back.
Claim
The first chemotherapy session was technically my second-they’d started me in Chicago,
but that felt like a different lifetime, that I couldn’t still process it’s been barely a week since I
started.
This was different. More aggressive, more precise, and more monitored in ways that the
hospital in Chicago didn’t do.
My mother sat beside me for the entire four-hour infusion, her hand around mine, talking
sometimes and sometimes just sitting in the silence not saying anything, not needing to say
anything.
“Tell me what you want to do,” she said at one point. “When this is over. When you’re better.
Tell me what you want p>
“Tennis,” I said immediately, and surprised myself with it-the immediacy of it, the certainty
that I wanted to do this once more. This was a life that I had given up for a family, but i was
still in love with it.
“I want to get back on a court. Even if I’m terrible because I am out of practice for far too long. Even if I can barely swing the racket. I want to feel grass under my feet and a racket in
my hand p>
“You won’t be terrible,” my mother said, with the conviction of someone who’d watched me practice serves for seven years and had cheered loudly for every medal that I had won.
“You were extraordinary. You still are p>
“I’m bald and I weigh a hundred and twelve pounds p>
“Temporary.” She squeezed my hand. “Also irrelevant to the issue on ground p>
The side effects from the trial protocol were, as Frank had warned, significantly worse than
standard chemotherapy.
The nausea arrived within hours of the first infusion and stayed for three days-relentless, exhausting, the kind that made eating feel like I was going to war.
I lost what little weight I’d managed to put back on in the first two weeks of being home. My hair, the remaining one that I had left on my head fell out completely leaving me completely
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bald. My father sat on the edge of my bed that evening and read to me from the novel I’d been trying to get through for months-his voice quiet and steady, turning pages carefully, not commenting on the pile of hair on my pillow or the way I couldn’t quite look at my own reflection in the mirror across from the bed. “Dad,” I said, when he’d finished a chapter. “Can I ask you something p> “Always p> Claim “Are you angry at me? Genuinely. Not the version you tell me, the reassuring one. The actual answer p> He put the book down and looked at me for a long moment. “I was,” he said. “For a long time, I was very angry. Not at you-at myself, mostly, for the choices I made that drove you away. But also at the situation, at the years we missed, at the fact that-” He stopped. “At the fact that I missed so much. You were married. You had a child. My grandchild. I don’t even know what he looks like p> “Nick.” Saying his name still hurt. “He looks like Logan mostly. But he has my eyes p> “I’d like to meet him someday p> “Maybe.” I looked at the ceiling. “Maybe someday p> We were quiet for a while, not saying anything to each other just quietly living in it. “Your mother put all your trophies back up,” my father said eventually. “After you left. She took them down first-couldn’t bear to look at them because it hurt her more than she let on. Then about a year later, she put them back up. She said it helped. Having evidence that you’d existed in this house p> I didn’t trust my voice for a moment. “I’m here now,” I said finally, smiling at him as he smiled back nodding his head. “Yes.” He picked up the book again. “You are. And that is all that matters.” He said patting my hand as I smiled at him and tried not to let the tears fall. 3/4 < Sedona’s Friends From Her Past Claim Admins2