I was in my fourth radiation session. I was sitting across from my friend Rachel’s husband, Rob. In his hand he had a paperback copy, with its ears folded, of The stories of John Cheever. Rob was my driver that day.
When we first arrived at the medical center, Rob found a seat in the waiting room while I went to the locker room. I carefully took off my clothes, removed a rectangle of gauze from my chest, and put on a white coat. Maine Med’s radiation oncology department is in the basement, and the cold air was uncomfortable on my bare arms. But the pain had taken on an unexpected psychological dimension: feeling it meant I was still here to feel it.
Then I took a photo in the dressing room, smiling. I had taken one before every session since I started treatment, as a way to mark the weeks. As always, I sent the photo to my husband Dan and my friend Rachel. I was here. This happened. I then left the dressing room to join Rob on the blue chairs.
Two weeks earlier, it was Rachel who came up with the plan: my radiation buddy system. I went to get my last pre-treatment CT scan and, sitting in my car afterwards, I felt my courage leave me. The loneliness of cancer is existential. You and only you enter the strange room with the beeping machines. Only you wake up with a start in the middle of the night, thinking: I have breast cancer. Life will never be the same.. I called Rachel from the parking lot and said, I wasn’t sure I was brave enough to drive to the radiation alone. He paused and then replied, “I’ll figure it out.”
A few days later he had done it. Rachel recruited four friends and three of their husbands and put together a schedule of my radiation drivers, all of whom had gladly signed up. Since Rachel’s work schedule didn’t allow her to take me herself, she acted as a coordinator and texted me the night before each appointment with the plan. Tomorrow your driver is Merry. She will be there at 9:15 am.
That Monday, four days after starting the treatment, the skin on my breast was already starting to itch. Rob sat across from me and I asked him about the book he was reading. He told me about how he found the paperback at the swap shop at our local dump. I told him I also loved Cheever’s stories, especially “The Swimmer.” After my session, Rob drove me home and I got out of the car feeling lighter.
When you are preparing for radiation, doctors will tell you that you can drive yourself. It’s easy; It’s only 20 minutes. But it’s not easy, and it’s never just 20 minutes. Maybe I could have handled the actual mechanics of driving, but I know it was those rides from my friends that helped me get through the treatment.
When my friend Nora took me to my appointment, she came into the exam room and asked me questions. In Leah’s day, we had breakfast at my house first: a Dutch baby with raspberries. Emma cried with me as we watched a boy, the same age as my youngest son, arrive at the radiation center for treatment. Merry appeared in his days driving with bouquets of flowers from his garden. Surrounded by lifelong friends, chatting as we had for years, I was able to see cancer as just a part of my life overall.
On my last day of radiation, in mid-July, my husband, Dan, brought donuts for the Maine Med radiation team. After my session, everyone gathered around and applauded when I rang the cowbell to announce that I was done. When I got home, our oldest son was standing in the dining room with a Lazy Daisy cake that he had baked and covered with candles.
It’s been almost a year since those appointments and I still remember them clearly: my chest swelled to the size of a watermelon; my nipple bleeds and my areola comes off; the instructions coming through the speaker, reminding me to hold my breath and stay still.
But I can’t remember the pain anymore. what i can I still feel my friend Jess’s leg against mine on the waiting room couch; the relief that washed over me when I walked out of the treatment room and found Emma, Rob or Dan waiting for me. More than anything, I feel a deep sense of worth. During those five weeks of driving, with conversations about books, teenagers, and what do best with Dutch babies, I learned what it feels like to be truly cared for. I realized that love can take many forms: flowers, cakes, spreadsheet schedules.
Sometimes it was as simple as a friend in the waiting room holding a paperback, ready to talk about it all the way home.
Caitlin Shetterly He is a journalist, editor and author. His new novel, The Gulf of Lionswas published in May. She lives in Maine with her husband and two children.
PS “9 life lessons I learned after my cancer diagnosis,” and what does it mean to think of cancer as a battle?
(Photo by Angela Rober/Stocksy.)
