Back in the summer, as readers of this blog will recall, I
had radiation treatment, fifteen days of treatment which concluded in mid-July. It was high-tech and highly effective; the doctors who
reviewed the post-treatment scans found no clear evidence of active cancer, and
were very pleased. There’s no sign that this has changed; my cancer may come
back but it has been quite decisively defeated for now.
What hasn’t gone away is (or are? - should this verb be singular or plural?) the side-effects of the treatment. There
seem to be two sources for these side-effects. The first is the radiation
treatment itself, which didn’t feel in any way unpleasant at the time but
evidently is a deep burden on the body. The second, Teresa and I think, is all
the prior treatment that I’ve had. My liver, in particular, withstood all this
treatment for years – but it seems as if the radiation treatment was a tipping
point, and now the side-effects are getting more play.
Not that much more play, I should emphasize. I’m still
reading and writing for my biography of Arthur Chaskalson, South Africa’s
distinguished jurist. I’m also negotiating with the publisher with whom I have
a contract to see if we can find a way to agree on the right length for the book
(what I gave them was much longer than what they turned out to want); this
process is arduous enough to count as a side-effect all by itself!
But there are medical features, the main one of which is sheer
fatigue. An example: the day before yesterday, October 26, I was in New York to
attend an excellent workshop presentation by a former colleague, but before that got started I made a
trip to my dentist. This required coming up out of the subway at 54th
Street and Madison Avenue. Fine – except that at least in the subway hallways
that I walked through (and I don’t know any other routes because I don’t know
this station) – I confronted three ways out: an escalator running down; a
staircase; and another escalator, which wasn’t going up or down. The result was
that I had to climb 80 stairs, with only the stairway rest platforms to stop at
(there were more stairs afterward, but I’ll stick to these 80). It’s clear, unfortunately,
that I don’t have 80 steps of ready climbing ability available for the asking. I went
slowly up; along the way a woman asked me if I needed her to get me some water. I did, actually, but declined – I couldn’t really imagine how she would have
carried out this generous offer, there in the middle of the subway exit route. I felt that I went through much of the afternoon barely able to move any further at all.
A side note on the subways: Subway performance is most often measured in
terms of on-time trains. At the same time, having a down escalator running but
no up escalator is also a sign of a system that isn’t working right – another symptom
of New York’s infrastructure breaking down, and another reason why I’m
fortunate to be able to stay home these days.
This will pass. (My recovery will probably be quicker than the subway's!) I’m now doing physical therapy, and though I
haven’t been at it long I feel like it has already been helpful. It will be
sometime before I’m anything like “strong,” but I can certainly become stronger
than I’ve been. Still, the set of side effects is startling to experience. I
can and do fall asleep in a moment – and then I wake up in the middle of the
night eager to read a South Africa book. Then there’s been the swelling from
water retention, treated with diuretics: too little treatment doesn’t do the
job, too much seems to have other internal effects. And a new antibiotic. Cramping
in my legs and hands. And so on … The radiation treatment information Memorial Sloan Kettering gave me warned of possible prolonged fatigue, and other symptoms, yet it’s all a bit wearing. Still it will all pass, as I said, some of it literally
as well as figuratively.
So that’s my news – nothing to get alarmed about, but a set of effects that I’d
like to shed as soon as possible. Sorry for this prolonged complaint!
