The Girl With Nine Wigs (3 page)

Chemotherapy is much less exciting than it sounds. I will be bedbound twenty-four hours a day. For eight of those hours I will be hooked up to an IV of chemo drugs. For the remaining sixteen I will be hooked up to an IV of water to flush out those drugs.

Thrilling
.

Bas whistles as he hooks up some bags to the IV tube coming out of my arm. It looks innocuous enough—a bag of yellow stuff next to two bags of clear fluid. Bas fiddles around with the tube while another white coat makes notes on my file. I watch as the tube connected to my arm slowly fills with the yellow fluid. I carefully observe the yellow creeping closer and closer to my vein.

“Is this the chemo?”

“Yes.”

I don't know if I want to take my arm away from this yellow gunk or if I want to leave it where it is and surrender. “Will it make me throw up?”

“It might,” says Bas, “but not necessarily. Do you see this bag?” He points to one of the clear ones. “It's an antinausea drug.”

The name of this miracle drug is dexamethasone. It has one unfortunate side effect, though: fluid retention. Within an hour I look and feel like a puffer fish from all the fluids I'm holding in. My cheeks are red and my face and arms are completely swollen. I don't throw up but it feels as if I have to, which is much worse than actually throwing up. Finally, my stomach can't take it, and a wave of bile comes out. I can smell my last meal: a tuna salad sandwich.
No more tuna salad for me. Ever.
I am nauseous for the rest of the day, but luckily I only vomit that one time.

My first bonus.

 

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 1

M
Y FAMILY TURNS MY HOSPITAL
room into a command center. My mom stays with me twenty-four hours a day so that we can sleep off this nightmare together. She spends each night on a cot next to my bed. Although I don't have much to do, sleeping in is not part of the package. Every morning at seven we are woken by the morning crew: nurses, needles, and a shrill lady pushing a coffee cart. The cancer makes me feel like a little girl again, and I desperately need my mom. Every time I have to go to the toilet she detaches my IV pump from its socket, and when I feel too sick to get up she brushes my teeth with one hand and holds a spit bowl under my chin with the other. She helps the nurses to look after me, and when I sleep she watches over me.

My father takes care of the business side of things, doing background checks on my doctor with all his medical friends and researching my disease. He has lunches and dinners in private clubs and calls it networking, and as far as I know that's what he does between nine
A.M.
and nine
P.M.
He's been talking to everyone in the hospital, and now he's heard about the Mayo Clinic in America and has turned it into his new project. In the past few days he has developed more of a relationship with my doctor than I have. While I look the other way, my father chases Dr. L to offer his latest advice on my treatment. I myself am not so keen on contact with Dr. L. To me, he is just as nasty as my disease.

I'm happy to leave the research to my father. When I first got my diagnosis I tried to do the research thing, but I failed miserably at it. When I typed “rhabdomyosarcoma” into the Internet search bar it generated 846,000 hits.
So much for a rare cancer.
The statistics weren't much better. I slammed shut the lid of my laptop. It felt as if each one of those hits killed one of my dreams.

So far the cancer has brought one good thing: I have my sister back. Our fights are a thing of the past. The looks we exchange are different. The hostility is gone. Love has taken its place. It's maybe strange to say, lying in a hospital bed at all, but every time she walks in I feel really happy.

Sis has her role too. She keeps everything going at home, which is much more than feeding our blind, demented cat and taking out the trash. She makes sure my father eats proper meals and that Mom is surprised with phone calls, sandwiches, and glossy magazines. Where she finds the time to do all that, finish writing her thesis, and visit me, I have no idea, but she shows up at the hospital every day armed with fresh pasta, organic soup, body lotion, and a beaming smile.

Me, I have only one job: surviving chemo. To get sick and then get better. So that's what I do. The only thing on my to-do list is survival. I lie in bed, determined to leave this mess behind me. Nothing moves me, not even the pain I feel when they insert the IV or when I'm throwing up into a bucket between my mother's hands. I don't know if I feel depressed. If this is what depression is like. I do know that I've never felt so empty in my life.

 

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 2

“
L
OOK AT THE STATE
of her! It's completely unacceptable. If you don't do something about it immediately, I'm going to take the poor thing out of here myself.”

From inside my room I can hear Jan with our other close friend, Jochem, scolding Dr. L in the hallway. Jan, a well-known TV host and enfant terrible of the Netherlands, can get away with basically anything—whether he's hosting his TV talk show or hounding my doctor. I can hear Dr. L speak uncomfortably to Jan, and it makes me smile.

My head has expanded from a puffer fish to the size of a football the color of a tomato, and my arms do not even remotely resemble their old shapes. That I am about three kilos heavier than yesterday does not escape Jan's and Jochem's attention.

“Hey, cutie! You're positively glowing today. That shade of crimson is very becoming on you.” Jan produces a carton of fresh blueberry juice from his bag. “For the antioxis or something.”

Jochem presents me with two more bottles of dark red fluid. The label reads
ELDERBERRY
. “I asked for the one with the most vitamins,” he says quietly. “The lady behind the counter said this is really good for you.” He bends over and kisses me on the cheek.

Besides my family, there's only a handful of friends I'm happy to have around me these days. There's my best friend Annabel and then there's Jan, Jochem, and Rob, number three of the gang.

The boys are a great gift as they are always available (being retired, freelance, and jobless) and make me laugh the whole time, but it is Annabel who visits me nearly every day. We have known each other since we were learning to read and write in kindergarten. Since then not a day has gone by that we don't know what the other is doing, and with whom.

As we are very different characters but both Geminis, Annabel explains that there are two kinds of Geminis: those with more characteristics of a Taurus and those with more of the Cancer sign. According to her, she's more Taurus and I'm more Cancer. Well, we've just about proven that bit
.
I never really pay attention, but I'm sure she has an astrological explanation for why she went on to study marketing at university while I opted for political science. Annabel is not just my partner in crime but also my fashion guru; somehow between the Chanel tops and vintage bags we find time to discuss solar energy, inflation, and genocide in the developing world.

We discovered the world together. As small girls, as teenagers, and now as (supposedly) adults. We've eaten snails in the Dordogne and sweets in the harbor of Copenhagen. We've stood openmouthed beneath Josephine Baker's chandelier in her French château filled with bats. We've swum, screeching, through seaweed in Denmark and bought our first pair of velvet lady shoes in a boutique in London.

We have only ever been apart twice. First when I left for the Himalayas and later when Annabel went to do an internship in New York, where she worked in a small fashion house specializing in bridal couture. She'd just returned when cancer entered our lives, though looking back we could both see the signs that something had been wrong. I went to visit her in December, to celebrate Christmas and New Year's together. She'd be three blocks and two Starbucks ahead of me while I was still panting my way up the city's endless subway steps. And it definitely wasn't like me to be partied out by one
A.M.
on New Year's Eve when there was a cute New Yorker standing in front of me. Luckily I wasn't too tired to take his business card, which led to Sunday morning at MoMA, which turned into Sunday afternoon at Pastis, which ended up in a romantic dinner with plenty of red wine (and bed). The next day I woke up coughing and trembling on the Lower East Side. I was covered in sweat and felt sick. It was still dark out when I silently closed the door behind me.

This is the second time the boys have come to visit me. Last time Jan brought me a lollipop in the shape of a heart; Jochem brought a bunch of flowers. And, of course, Jan always comes with a pile of tabloids and magazines. They make a fuss when the nurses come in bearing needles, telling them to keep their hands off me.

Today it's Nurse Bas who comes in to reinsert my IV. As soon as he brings out the needle, Jan's and Jochem's expressions change. They turn silent and carefully step aside. For once, neither of them makes a joke. I'm not one of the guys anymore; I'm a sick puffer fish hooked up to an IV.

 

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 5

T
HERE IS A KNOCK AT
the door. It's the not-so-charming doctor from the pulmonary department who told me I have cancer.
Poor guy, it's not his fault he just happened to be taking over for my beloved Dr. K on that particular day.
I jump when his head suddenly appears from behind the curtain that closes off my bed from the rest of the hospital (and everything walking, throwing up, and screeching around inside it). He wants to know how I'm doing.
Besides the nausea and bloated head from all the drugs being pumped into me?
I tell him I'm fine.

I tell everyone who asks that I'm fine. Don't ask me why.

He leaves and the tall figure of Dr. L appears, with a swarm of students following him. They walk in without warning and surround my bed, twelve eyes boring into me. I hate it when he brings them along. It's embarrassing and awkward to be looked at like a science experiment, ressembling a puff fish. But I guess that should be the least of my worries now. They simply walk in, take up position, and start staring.

“Good morning, we've come to take a look at you,” says Dr. L.

Duh, I can see that.
I look past the collection of strange doctors from the oncology and hematology departments, scanning for “Dr. McDreamy,” who had been kind enough to help me pull down my camisole over my shaking back the day he'd drained the fluid, when it wasn't clear yet that an entire family of tumors had attached itself to my lung. (Correction: to the fleece surrounding my lung, also called “pleural space.”) The one who came to visit me every day and ask after Anna Karenina. But Dr. K is not among them.

There is something different about Dr. L today: He's smiling. The first time I've ever seen him do that.

“I have two pieces of good news. One: We have the definitive lab results back, and your bones are indeed clean. Two: We have taken another look at your photos and have come to the conclusion that the cancer is only in the pleura. That means the tumors are limited to the thorax and have not yet penetrated the right abdomen. The stinging you feel around your liver is just a shooting pain. Which means there is the probability of dissemination, but it is not organ-to-organ, and although I can't guarantee anything since your illness is quite rare and the lab still isn't sure of the exact diagnosis, this could make the prognosis a lot more optimistic.”

Silence. I don't really understand what he has just said. Bones, organ-to-organ dissemination, thorax? But Mom makes a high-pitched noise and starts to sob. That's quite rare for her. Slowly I realize that she's crying tears of joy.
This is good news. Really good news!
Dr. L is telling me my liver is clean—and by now I know that cancer in the liver usually means picking out a spot at the cemetery.

I can't help but smile. My mom squeezes my hand.

“It's still going to be a long treatment,” Dr. L continues. “We're going to schedule you for fifty-four weeks of chemo. For now you'll come in every week for treatment. Later on we'll reduce it to every three weeks. Once this IV drip is done, you can go home for the weekend. I'll see you on Monday.”

When he leaves, Mom is still sobbing.

 

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 17

I
LOOK IN THE MIRROR
at the lady standing behind me. Strange hands pick through what's left of my hair. Clumps fall to my feet. She doesn't look like the kind of lady I would take fashion advice from, but today I haven't been given a choice. This time of my life seems to be all about surrender.

Wig shopping isn't new to me, but I never thought I would be wig shopping for myself. Last year my mother went through the same hell during her breast cancer. I accompanied her to two shops, and I didn't bring any good memories back of those visits. They were weird places with saleswomen trying to make us feel we were out shopping for something nice. At the time my mother still wore her hair piled on top of her head. Now it's short and messy.

She underwent two operations to cut out as much of the cancer as possible, followed by five weeks of radiation, and then chemotherapy at the same hospital where I am now a patient. It was a scary time for all of us. The doctors' words became increasingly more frightening, from surgery to radiation to chemo. The last stage was the worst. Chemo and death seem so close together.

We did leave with a wig for my mother, but it all felt very mechanical. There was none of the joy or relief that comes with finding what you have been looking for. A woman in despair, deprived of her hair and her femininity. A saleswoman holding a soft hazelnut-brown wig that came closest to the hairdo my mother had said good-bye to. Then the sound of a bank card being swiped. My mother rarely wore it, preferring to wrap her head in a scarf. I never told her this, but to me the wig always looked unnatural.