Cancer on Five Dollars a Day* *(chemo not included): How Humor Got Me through the Toughest Journey of My Life by Robert Schimmel Read Free Book Online Page B

peeing in your pants. But you’re not really peeing in your pants.’ And I say, ‘What if I really do pee in my pants?’”
    A communal roar. I keep going. “‘What’s that gonna feel like? What kind of sensation is that?’ She says, ‘No sensation. I guess you’ll just find out later.’ Great. So it’s like a wet dream without the sex?’”
    They’re gone. Howling. They need this. They need the distraction, the change of pace, the release.
    And, honestly, so do I.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 7, 2000
    My first chemotherapy session.
    I walk into the infusion center at Mayo, a large, drab room that feels like the inside of a tomb but without the charm. There are a few beds and several chairs arranged near the center, pretty much scrambled together. Behind the cluster of beds and chairs are doors leading off to private rooms where patients with compromised immune systems receive their treatments. The air in here is thick and smells of Lysol. People trudge to their seats as if they are underwater.
    The first thing I notice when I walk in is a poster on the back wall of the evolution of man. Except I imagine it in reverse. The first image is of a healthy man, walking erect. In each successive frame the man becomes more and more bent over and decrepit. I see myself morph into the poster, becoming over the next eight months the man in the final frame, once strong and healthy, who now looks like a human skeleton.
    I scan the room and the images in the poster become suddenly, frighteningly real. Everyone in here is the man in the last frame. All the people I see are hooked up to IVs and everybody is either bald or has patches of hair missing. The door to a private room swings open and a man appears in the doorway. He can barely stand. His skin is chalk white. He is bone thin, a walking corpse. He shuffles forward, nods to a nurse, and I think, I hope to God that was his last treatment.
    “Mr. Schimmel?”
    A nurse in blue scrubs approaches, extends her hand. She is young, blonde, and cute. More than cute. She’s hot. Even in her blue crinkly hospital get-up, I can see that she has a great body. Man, those feelings never go away. I’m about to have chemotherapy, I’m scared shitless, but a hot blonde calls my name, and I’m thinking maybe I can bang her before the nausea sets in. That’s normal, right?
    “Please, call me Robert.” I give her a smile that could melt the sun, but she spins away and leads me to the beds and chairs where a dozen people are hooked up, getting chemo. Some are lying down, watching TV. A few are sitting up, reading. Some are sleeping. Others are staring off, their eyes vacant.
    “You can sit anywhere you like,” the nurse says. Her voice is soft and musical. “Or you can lie down—”
    “No,” I say, surprised at how determined by voice sounds.
    “I’m not taking this lying down. I’m not giving in to it.”
    The cute nurse smiles, points to an empty chair.
    “Thanks,” I say as if she’s the hostess leading me to a power table at Spago. “Maybe thanks isn’t the right word.”
    She smiles again and starts fiddling with a nearby IV tube. I land in a chair next to a burly guy around my age. His eyes are sunken and his lips are dotted with sores. He looks pissed off.
    “I’m Robert.”
    “Bill.” He spits it out. Not sure if he hates his name, me, or life in general.
    “How you doing?” I say.
    “How do you think I’m doing?” Bill’s voice is raspy, his Midwestern drawl a bitter twang. “I got cancer .”
    I look at him. “So do I.”
    Bill stares back, his sunken eyes lasered into mine. “Good for you.”
    “Well, I wouldn’t call it good— ”
    A brush on my arm. The cute nurse in the blue smock. She speaks low, like a ventriloquist, barely moving her lips. “Maybe you should find another seat. He has a really bad attitude. You need a lot of positive energy to get through this.”
    I look over at Bill. He glares at me again, then turns away, focusing his attention on a