The Kangaroo and the Pocket
Linda A. Dougherty
©
Copyright 2021 by Linda A. Dougherty
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In
early May 2018, my life circled in the same holding pattern as it had
been since I was diagnosed in October 2015 with follicular type of
Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. I was exercising, eating a careful
diet and taking natural supplements to boost my immune system. Every
day I went into a local middle school where I work as a one to
one special education aide. Every six months I saw the oncologist,
had blood work drawn and we hoped it would stay that way or a miracle
would happen. Cancer steals your life in unexpected ways even before
it kills, or almost kills you. But, you learn to live with new
rhythms in your life.
That
warm spring, my special needs student and I were busy reading books
about Australia because that was what the seventh grade geography class
was studying. We read about koalas, wallabies and kangaroos. He was
especially fascinated by how tiny newborn kangaroos, the size of a
bean, crawl up their mothers fur after birth and nestle into their
mother’s pocket for the next six or so months, growing larger
and stronger while suckling their mother’s milk.
“Ah,
the baby kangaroo….he’s so cute!”
he’d say over and over.
“Yes, they are,” I’d
nod.
By
mid-May, everything changed. The cancer had transformed, as they
call it, in my back to Diffuse Large B Cell, and was growing quickly,
wrapping its tentacles around my lowest right rib while it snaked
through muscle next to my spine. Pan knifed me and I had to leave
early from school one afternoon bent over in a wash of tears. In a
whirlwind of an MRI, a CT biopsy, a PET scan and other tests, my
last step to prepare for chemotherapy was to go into Brigham and
Women’s Hospital to get a port installed in my chest. It was
the easiest and safest way to infuse me with chemotherapy drugs as
well as take blood work each time.
“It’s
like a little pocket,” they explained.
A
week before chemo was scheduled to begin, I sat alongside a line-up
of other middle-aged men and women, waiting to be prepped for having
shunts or ports stitched into their bodies. In the small curtained
cubicle, I lay, with my salt and pepper curls tucked into a cap, with
a hep-lock taped into my left arm, and my johnny-clad body buried
under a couple of layers of blankets to stay warm, I waited.
The
only real concern on my mind was: “What the heck am I going to
blurt out while under anesthesia?”
It
was a question mark because the few other times I have been in that
unguarded state for surgery, I apparently provided entertainment for
the operating room personnel. I know because I had a biopsy at
thirty and the doctor told me afterwards, laughing, that she’d
asked me to tell her a joke as I drifted off into the netherworld. “You
kept on saying the same line over and over,” she
said with a grin. After that, my theory was that surgical personnel
find benign entertainment in anesthesia-induced stupor much the way I
entertained myself as a newlywed finding my husband was an active
dreamer who talked. He’d mumble crazy dream fantasies at my
side and I couldn’t resist egging on the dialog with questions
until he woke up sufficiently to grumble, “Stop talking!”
The
second time was years later while having cataract surgery on my left
eye. I remember suddenly seeing clouded dark figures in a haze and
the bright orb of the operating room overhead light but it was all
garbed in the drug induced sense of peace from whatever coursed
through my veins. I felt nothing except the prickling cold of the
operating room. Disembodied voices seemed to float all around me in
something like white noise. I managed to whine, “cold, cold”. The
doctor snapped, “Stop talking! I’m almost done and
when you talk I can’t stitch!” I managed to finger spell
“cold, cold” then swirled back into darkness just as I
heard another woman’s voice say, “She’s signing!”
The
next day, the doctor remarked with a smile, “Guess you don’t
have much experience with opiates!” “You were supposed
to stay awake during the surgery so I could ask you to do certain
things but you were out like a light.” “I asked the
anesthesiologist how much he gave you and he said the lightest dose
possible.”
Then
Dr. A. said, with a twinkle in her eye that I could not miss even
with one eye patched up, “You were talking the entire
operation!” She chuckled and I wondered just what I’d
said. I didn’t ask.
They
wheeled me into the operating room and bustled about, readying
everything. The doctor who’d introduced himself to me in the
prep area popped his head over me, telling me it would be about
thirty minutes. They were efficient and assured. I wasn’t
worried about the procedure or even chemo, but the question danced
around in my thoughts, “What are you going to say, Linda?”
Now,
it’s not like I have deep dark secrets….but……still….besides
not liking the taste of alcohol, it is one reason I never drank even
in college, well except for the quarter can of beer that made me
silly…… a loss of control. If I’m going to be a
jerk or a clown it will be volitional, not with the help of any mood
altering substances, thank you very much!
The
sedative worked quickly and I submerged into that state of blankness.
After the surgery, as I started to slowly surface, one question was
on my mind.
“ Can
I put a jo, jo, jo, jo…..kangaroo in my pocket?”
“WHAT?”
The nurse paused in her tidying up the area and looked at me with
one eyebrow dangling high. “What did you say?”
I
tried again. “Can a put a jo, jo, jo, jo….kangaroo in
my pocket?” I was earnest. This was an important matter. The
question made perfect sense to me in my state. She kind of snorted
and turned away. I didn’t understand why she was ignoring my
perfectly intelligent question.
Even
more insistent, now tapping the port, I tried once more to ask my
all-consuming question, “ I said, can I put a kangaroo
in my pocket?”
She
didn’t even turn her head, and with the last few words of my
question, I floated up further out of the blank world of sedation
towards reality.
I
started to think about school and reading about kangaroos.
“Joey….that was the word I was trying to say…..why
couldn’t I say it?” I began to laugh. Now I knew why
the nurse ignored my question….it made no sense! The nurse
turned her head a bit and said, “They’ll take you to
recovery now.” I chuckled all the way to the recovery room
thinking about having a kangaroo in my pocket.
Back
in school two days later, I told my operating room story to David *. He
laughed about me thinking I could put a kangaroo in the little
pocket I explained to him I had put inside my chest. My student,
with all of his challenges, could laugh along with me and laughter is
healing.
I
found lots of reasons to laugh at myself that May and June as chemo
burned my scalp and I awoke to large clumps of curls every morning on
my pillow. I laughed at the bald head that stared back at me in the
mirror. The eyelashes that fell on my cheeks. The eyebrows that
disappeared. I joked on Facebook about coloring my skin green or
purple to look like a movie alien. I told all my friends my story
about the kangaroo and the pocket.
I
thought about the suffering of so many around me, sitting at the
cancer center, maybe going through a second round of chemo and
hoping it would work this time. I prayed for
people I saw
sitting quietly around me, waiting like me for their next turn in an
infusion chair. I thought about the doctors, my oncologist and how
searing it must be to know that not every patient will make it. I
thought of the nurses who are with their core of patients each time
they have to hook one of us up the stand with bags of life giving
poisons. So, I decided I wanted to bring levity and even fun into my
sessions.
My
nurse chuckled when I told her about the kangaroo in my pocket, so I
judged her to be worthy of my plan. Before my second treatment, I
drew a two and a half foot long French waiter balancing an olive
capped martini glass on a tray. (I do love green olives) I
introduced him to everyone as Maurice who was serving me cocktails
(although I don’t drink) and I taped him to my IV cart that was
serving me a cocktail of drugs every three weeks from early June to
my last round on September 30, 2018. The nurses loved it.
A
month later, I drew a cartoon of my nurse, Grace, with a Star Trek
phaser shooting my cancer and taped it to her “command center”
computer cart that controlled the choreography of five drugs
languidly moving into me one after another.
In
August, while swathed in a mint green paper gown, Grace held one of
the bags aloft to get a better flow, and I commented, “You
look like the Statue of Liberty.” That gave me an idea. The
next time, a Statue of Liberty holding a bag of chemo topped with a
photo of her head in a crown was waiting for her. By now, other
nurses would pop their heads in to see what the next bit of fun was.
Maurice still manned his post next to me, serving me his three-hour
or more long supply of cocktails.
After
months of chemotherapy, they did a PET scan to see if the pesky
cancer cells were surrendering or still putting up a fight. The
doctor beamed in relief as he told me that indications were that the
cancer was completely gone but they would continue the treatment
until the scheduled end just to make sure. My next cartoon was
copied and printed lymphoma cell photos from the internet cut into an
amorphous blob with the caption: “ I’m melting,
melting…..Oh what a world, what a world…who would have
thought that some little girl like you could destroy my beautiful
wickedness.”
I
saved my masterpiece for the second to last time in the infusion
chair. I was going to see my oncologist before the infusion. Again,
Star Trek, particularly stoic Mr. Spock was my inspiration. I drew a
body clad with a uniform that I was later told by a Trekkie was not
the original Star Trek series uniform. I printed Dr. J’s
smiling face from a photo posted on the hospital website, used a
black marker to restyle his hair and scissors to snip his ears into
more Vulcan-worthy shape. His fingers frozen into the Vulcan
greeting, the bubble read, “Live long and prosper.”
I
told him I’d been having fun and had something for him. He
chortled with surprised glee when I unrolled his Spock image and
asked, “Is this for me?” He kept looking at it with a
watermelon slice grin on his face.
“I’m
going to hang this up in my office!”
His
nurse practitioner told me in early September that many nurses and
other doctors went in to look at it thumbtacked to his office wall
and took photos of it. She sent me a photo because I neglected to
take one before giving it to him and told me, “Dr. J loves
it”.
Maurice
now lies rolled up on a shelf in a room where he’s lived since
September 30, 2018. I am hoping never to need his services again. The
port is long gone with only a thin whitened scar to remind me I
wanted to put a kangaroo in my pocket.
*
His name was changed due to confidentiality laws in education and to
protect his privacy and no, he never knew I had cancer. I just told
him the pocket was to give me medicine and he was happy.
My
thanks to my many special needs students who have brought so many
smiles to my face over the years. Thanks to all the doctors and
nurses at Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.
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