There are two kinds of recliners for patients to sit in during their visit to what I call The Chemo Lounge. I think the medical professionals call it the "chemo room". No matter what it is called, there are seven comfy chairs in this large room, with all of them oriented to point towards the giant TV bolted to the wall. The first time I was there, the TV was blaring with THE PRICE IS RIGHT CONTESTANTS SCREAMING TO BE HEARD ABOVE THE AUDIENCE THE PRICES THEY WERE CHOOSING. I didn't ask to change the channel or even to turn the volume down. Not sure I ever will. I just want to get my chemo done and get OUT of there.
Of the seven chairs, four of them are brown, overstuffed fake leather Lazy Boy rocker/recliners. The kind with the big, puffy armrests and cavernous padding in the wide seat and back. These are big enough for a person and a half, or two slender people. When these recline, you can extend the foot rest a few more inches - a glorious luxury for anyone over six feet tall. The backs are tall enough so that if you just recline the back, you will feel like you are resting on a cloud at a 45 degree angle and your neck and head are perfectly supported. These four chocolate marshmallow chairs are the perfectly aimed front row, pointed at the TV for maximum comfort during your chemo treatment. If you would like to, you can do what one patient did during my first treatment - she reclined all the way with foot rest extended fully so she essentially had a twin sized bed. In which she promptly fell asleep as soon as her IV was hooked up and snored almost louder than Drew Carey giving words of encouragement to the NEXT CONTESTANT ON THE PRICE IS RIGHT.
The other three chairs in the second row of seating consists of blue, narrow seats that look like they came out of an Amtrak train. They are complete with narrow arm rests(with slight padding), a foot thingy that does not extend far enough to support the bottom half of my calves let alone ankles and feet, and the back of the chair is not tall enough. When I go to lean my head back, I realize that the top of the chair hits me in the middle of my neck. That would be really awesome for my dentist, bending my neck at a backwards 90 degrees so my mouth pulls itself open while I look straight up at the ceiling. I could slouch down so my head leans against the hard, skimpy padding, but then my butt is nearly on the edge of the recliner and if I put the foot rest out now, it will end at the backs of my knees. I am pretty sure if I extend the foot rest at this point that physics and gravity will rule the day and the entire assemblage of myself, chair, and chemo IV will all tip forward, possibly crashing noisily and interrupting the sleeping pleasure of one, and the viewing pleasure of the rest of the chemo patients who are now enraptured with ANOTHER CONTESTANT COMING ON DOWN TO CONTESTANTS ROW!
There were only two blue chairs open, all the premium brown chairs were filled, the last one just being taken by a small Oriental woman who came in moments before me.
I looked at her, and then back at the blue chairs. Then back at her again, hoping to catch her attention. I wasn't going to say, "Excuse me, but I think you just took my chair. You should be in the little blue chair, I should be in the Pappa Bear Lazy Boy." I wanted her to look up and see the realization come over her face. I wanted her to give me that seat, like a boy scout would give up his seat to an elderly person on the bus. Not because I was older than her (because I was), but because I was so much larger than her in all dimensions.
She didn't look at me. I think the nurses saw the looks I was giving this little woman and they realized what I wanted, but in reality, I was no more entitled to the big chairs than anyone else in that room. First come, first served. It was not the nurses' job to assign chairs according to size. They were not sociological mediators, they were just there to put radioactive chemicals in our IVs.
So I sat in one of the blue chairs, and very shortly after that, the last blue chair was taken by a very elderly woman who came in on a wheelchair. Full house at the Chemo Lounge. We had two waitresses, I mean nurses, serving seven patients. They didn't ask me what kind of chemo cocktail I wanted, that was already predetermined by the oncologist. I did notice that the when the second chemo drug was administered, it was a particularly nasty one, because the nurse who pushed it into my IV first made sure that she had on her bullet-proof vest, heavy duty rubber gloves that went all the way to her elbows, and her 270 degree full-face shield before she even opened the special delivery package sent just for me.
This special treatment did get the attention of every patient in the room, with the exception of our fellow patient whose snoring in her recliner/twin bed was now drowning out Victor on The Young and The Restless. Small Woman in Large Brown Lazy Boy (her Native American name, christened by me) even looked up and made eye contact with me. I tried to shoot daggers from my eyes at her. I tried mental telepathy. I tried to get her to show me some pity, but nothing worked. We could have waltzed our respective IV stands around the room and still traded chairs, even after chemo for both of us had started. She just didn't see it. And I wasn't going to ask for it.
I decided I could continue to focus a bunch of negative energy and resentment in her direction, but I knew it wasn't her problem. It was me. I'm not even going to write about how cute she looked in her selection of little chemo hats available for free when you visit The Chemo Lounge. I was simply annoyed that I was pretty sure she could have fit her whole family in that Pappa Bear chair with her, while I dangled limbs and body parts out of all of the perimeters of the smaller blue chair I was in. She was born small, I was born XL. Let it go.
We were both there for chemo, a great equalizer, much the same as cancer is. I had no business being annoyed with her. It doesn't matter how young, or tall, or pretty, or healthy, or rich you are. Breast cancer can hit us all. And please remember that it will hit 1 in 8 of us.
Then I wondered if all of the patients in The Chemo Lounge were on a three-week rotation. Will I see that same group of women at my next chemo appointment? I bet I will see at least some of them. I also bet if I talk to the nurses that they could probably figure out a way to save me a Pappa Bear chair. I know if I weighed three hundred pounds that I could not fit in a blue chair - they would have to save a brown chair for me. If they can't save me a brown chair, I might have to walk over to Small Woman in Large Brown Lazy Boy and do a Terminator number on her and just say, "GET. OUT."
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