Cancer on Five Dollars a Day* *(chemo not included): How Humor Got Me through the Toughest Journey of My Life

by Robert Schimmel

  “Right.”

  “Got it,” I say. “I don’t think either one of us wants to have this conversation again. I’m sure the last thing you want to see is a mouthful of sores again in a week and have to ask me, ‘Robert, did you go down on your wife?’”

  “Right,” he says again. “You can’t do that. Not during chemo. You never know what’s down there.”

  I look at him. “You never know what’s down there? I was down there. Who do you think I’m gonna find down there? Yoda?”

  He suddenly stands and waves at me in surrender. He leans briefly against the doorjamb, waves again, and without another word, leaves the room.

  Wow. No oral sex. It does make you think. If you shouldn’t be doing it now, why should you ever do it? It’s like when a woman gets pregnant, the doctor always says, “Don’t eat sushi. You shouldn’t eat raw fish when you’re pregnant because if there’s a parasite in it, you’re dead.” Well, why would you ever eat raw fish?

  Same thing with swordfish. Doesn’t make sense. If you’re not pregnant, you can eat all the swordfish you want. You can fuck the swordfish. But if you’re pregnant, forget it. This kind of shit makes me nervous.

  That’s why when I eat swordfish, I always wear a condom.

  The first chemotherapy session brings me to my knees, knocks me down, but not out. I stagger back to my feet and come back strong, ready for round two. I walk into the infusion center with a box of doughnuts and a chip on my shoulder. Feeling a teeny bit cocky, Mr. Chemo. I can handle you. You rocked me, but you couldn’t close the deal. Seven sessions to go. I know I can go the distance.

  The nurses are all over the doughnuts. Makes me happy. I’m thrilled to be the one to provide them with their mid-morning sugar high. They’re really the unsung heroes in all this, caring for people whose bodies, minds, and emotions are being devastated on a daily basis. It takes a special type of person to work with cancer patients. I’m taking what Dr. Mehldau said to heart—I am going to try to be a little selfish—but I know I’ll feel better about myself if I can make their jobs a little easier by (a) not being the asshole patient (there’s one in every infusion center; if you don’t know who it is, it’s you), and (b) getting them to laugh.

  As I wander through the heart of the room, I spot Bill, formerly the asshole patient, who’s waving frantically at me and pointing to a chair he’s saved next to him. I weave over to him and plant myself on the seat.

  He smiles. “How you doing?”

  “How do you think I’m doing? I got cancer.”

  Bill chuckles. The cute blonde nurse, whose name I’ve learned is Nadine, arrives and hooks me up to my IV. While she’s poking around for an available vein, Bill smiles at her, too. She’s so shocked she nearly jabs the IV into her own arm.

  “Nice kid,” Bill says after she’s done. “Okay, you ready?”

  “For what?”

  “To laugh. I got jokes, man.”

  And Bill begins peppering me with dozens of puns, jokes, and one-liners he’s collected, his face reconfigured from his previously permanent scowl to a disarming smile and a constant twinkling of his eyes. At one point, before Bill’s big fin-ish, Nadine walks by holding a jelly doughnut, her fingers dusted with powdered sugar.

  “How’s your day going, Nadino?” he says. Big smile.

  “Fine,” she says. “How about you, Bill? How’s your day going?”

  “I’ve had worse. Probably gonna have worse, too. Hey, I got a joke for you.”

  “Bring it on.”

  She fastens me with a huge, thankful smile. After the punch line, she laughs and leaves and Bill polishes off his routine. Suddenly we get serious and talk about the side effects he’s suffered. His choice of topic.

  “I want you to be prepared for what’s down the road,” Bill says solemnly, but without bitterness. I thank him and tell him about Dr. Mehldau warning me about the hazards of oral sex. I mention the dangers associated with eating somebody’s ass.

  “He never warned me about that,” Bill says. “But then again, you look like an ass eater.”

  “You know, you’re getting a little too funny,” I say. “Maybe you should go back to being a dick.”

  “Too late, Robert. You cured me,” Bill says, by far the nicest thing anyone’s said to me all day. Hell, almost any day.

  Two nights later, my hair falls out at dinner. Just like that. No warning. Bam. Like a nuclear shower hitting a fir tree full blast and knocking every needle off, zap, leaving nothing but naked branches.

  I’m poking at my food, sitting across the table from Vicki, contemplating yet again the whiplash known as my life, and while contemplating, I absently begin rubbing my chin, which, until that moment, had been covered with a neatly trimmed and manicured goatee. My fingers feel moist and scratchy. I look down and my food is completely covered in chin hair.

  “Holy shit.” I’m more amazed than angry. I stare at my plate. “Wow. What’s for dinner, honey? How about a big bowl of hair?”

  Since starting chemo, I’d been expecting to lose my hair. I just never expected it to all fall out at once, like a massive brown snowfall. I head into the bathroom to check out my face in the mirror. Sure enough, most of the hair on my chin is gone. Basically what’s left is my mustache.

  I turn on the faucet, cup my hands under the water, and gently splash my face. I rub in a little soap and give my remaining facial hair a good scrub. Hair begins immediately raining into the sink, dusting the basin. I peer at myself in the mirror. I am now totally clean-shaven, not a hair on my face. I stare at myself for a full minute. My eyes seem bigger, and weirdly enough, I look younger. I’ll have to get used to this face because I won’t be wearing a beard anytime soon. It’s a face that feels exposed and vulnerable.

  The next morning I wake up and my eyebrows are on my pillow. I walk into the bathroom and again stare in the mirror. I am hairless. All flesh, no fur. I look like an alien. Head, face, eyebrows as white and smooth as a baby’s butt. It’s odd staring at myself this way. I feel as if I’m at war, engaged in battle, and this new appearance is my uniform.

  It’s official. I have the cancer look.

  Shaved head, clean face, eyes glassy and sunken from heart-gripping fear and lack of sleep.

  The next day, I’m in the shower and, whammo, all my pubic hair falls out. Gone. Whoosh. Swirling away down the shower drain. I’m now officially and completely hairless.

  There’s something about the finality of losing your pubic hair. I expected to lose my facial hair. The eyebrows were a surprise, but thinking about it for a second, losing them made sense. Looking at my face in the mirror is shocking but acceptable. I have cancer. I’m undergoing chemo. You lose your hair. Goes with the territory. I’m okay with it. I’m even okay when the hair on my arms and legs skips town. A little bit of a “Yikes!” reaction, but, again, not cause for a major freak-out.

  But when the pubic hair goes?

  That’s a shocker. A major wake-up call. No hair anywhere else can be a style choice. Maybe I’m trying to look like Michael Stipe or Moby. Kind of cool, kind of hairless. But if you have no hair on your dick, you look sick. That’s the capper. That’s the signal that you’re in serious trouble. Shaving a crotch can be sexy for a woman. I’ve seen photos in magazines.

  But a guy without pubic hair? Looks like a plucked chicken.

  After my third chemo session, I get slammed with a high fever, which goes nicely with the million brand-new open sores that sprout up in my mouth and throat. I can’t swallow at all. When I try, it feels as if someone is drilling a hole into the back of my throat. About the only comfort I get is from chewing pieces of ice. But eating nothing but ice causes me to lose weight at an alarming rate. Dr. Mehldau checks me into the hospital for a couple of days to keep me nourished with an IV and to try to clear up the open sores.

  “I swear, I haven’t been near anyone’s asshole,” I say.

  He snickers. “I believe you. But just in case, I want to keep an eye on you.”
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br />   The IV takes, the sores subside, and within twenty-four hours, I’m feeling better. I’m sitting up in bed, waiting for Dr. Mehldau to check me out of the hospital, when the door opens and a man in a sport coat and tie pokes his head in. He looks like an insurance salesman.

  “Mr. Schimmel, do you have a moment?”

  “Jesus, I hope so. Come on in.”

  He bounces into the room and offers a handshake through the handles of his briefcase. “Stevie Blauner. How you doing?”

  “Okay.”

  “Great!”

  Stevie is tall and thin with a jumbo-sized head of shiny black hair that rests on his head like a dead animal. Talk about a bad wig. This guy’s wearing a possum on his head that looks like it just came out of Earl Scheib.

  “I’ll cut right to the chase. I’m a wig salesman.”

  “Really?”

  “Got my catalogue right in here.” Stevie presents the briefcase to me as if he’s offering me a box of candy.

  “A wig salesman, huh?”

  “Yep.”

  “You got one for my dick?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do.” He opens the briefcase with a flourish and pulls out a plastic catalogue. He starts whipping through the pages, occasionally wetting his finger with his tongue for traction.

  “You gotta be kidding me,” I say. “Cancer’s not enough. Now I got the dick wig sales rep in my room.”

  “We don’t call them dick wigs,” Stevie says. “We call them merkins.”

  “Merkins, huh?”

  “Yep. Merkins date back to the Elizabethan era. They’re perfectly natural. They’re made of real or artificial hair, your choice, and they attach with either liquid adhesive or Velcro.”

  “Fascinating. Do you sell a lot of these?”

  “You bet. Many cancer patients are self-conscious when they lose their pubic hair so a merkin is a very sensible alternative.” Stevie lowers his voice, letting me in on a secret. “It’s virtually undetectable.”

  “Yeah? I don’t have a single hair on my body and all of a sudden I’ve got a shrub between my legs and it’s undetectable? You don’t think someone is gonna see me naked and say, ‘So, yeah, I think we should . . . what the hell?’

  ‘What’s the matter, honey, you never saw pubic hair before?’

  ‘Not with snaps.’?”

  Stevie snorts. I shrug. “Well, I guess a dick wig’s better than growing three long hairs and trying to comb them over the top,” I say.

  “Merkin,” Stevie says.

  “I’m just curious. How much does one of these cost?”

  “As with any product, there’s a range. We have merkins starting at $44.95 all the way up to $3,000.”

  “For three thousand bucks, my merkin better cover my crotch and whack me off at the same time.”

  “I actually have a sample in my car, if you wanted to try one on,” Stevie says.

  “No, thanks. I’ll pass.”

  “Okay. But if you change your mind, here’s my card. I’m here at least once a week.” Stevie places his business card on my night table. “Have a good day, Robert,” he says.

  “You, too,” I say.

  Stevie leaves.

  “Try one on,” I mumble. “Right.” I pick up his card, read it, stare at it, and actually say aloud to the empty room, “This has to be a joke.”

  The card reads: “Wigs Unlimited” and gives a mailing address in Beaverton, Oregon.

  Not a joke.

  Sometime after my fourth session, the effects of the chemo start accumulating and begin battering me all at the same time. I feel like a crash test dummy hitting a brick wall in a Ford Focus.

  First, the mouth sores. No matter how much ice I chew or asses I refuse to lick, the sores will not go away. And forget about keeping anything down. I can’t get anything in. For three weeks straight I live on orange lozenges, Jell-O, water, and liquid Lidocaine to numb my mouth. Prisoners at Guantanamo have a better meal plan.

  Once the sores start to clear up and I return to solid food, I immediately throw everything up. Oh, and did I mention the headaches and dizziness? Every room I enter is spinning like a dreidel (to my non-Jewish friends, that’s a top). I close my eyes to get my bearings and the room spins faster. I force my eyes open to slits and try to focus on something to stop the bed from rolling, and, that’s it, I’m racing into the bathroom, hunched over like a comma, praying I make it to the bowl.

  All of this adds up to extreme weakness. I no longer walk. I shuffle. It feels as if there are fifty-pound weights lashed to each leg. The headaches intensify, become as relentless and incapacitating as migraines, but without the benefit of the light show. Imagine the worst rap music in the world pounding in your head, blasted at a volume beyond red line. I’m waiting for my ears to bleed.

  Then, to add to the fun, hemorrhoids. And not just a few. A mountain range. Popping out all the way from my ass to my waist. At least that’s what it feels like. Sitting on the toilet now takes all of my strength, courage, and will. I’ll be honest. Taking a good shit used to bring me pleasure. It now causes teeth-clenching pain. I cry during every crap.

  I see Dr. Mehldau for a once-over. In his examination room, I mentally go over my checklist of horrifying side effects, the worst of which, without a doubt, are the hemorrhoids. They’re killing me. Everything else is minor. I’ve got to get some relief. It’s like Al Qaeda living in my asshole.

  The door opens and the most gorgeous nurse I’ve ever seen walks in.

  “You . . . you’re not Dr. Mehldau,” I say. Oh, yeah. Mr. Smooth.

  “He’ll be right in. I’m Meredith. I’ll be doing your preliminary.” She smiles, revealing a slight overbite.

  Mannn. Would I like to bang her. Yeah, right. In my condition I couldn’t find my dick if I had a G.P.S.

  “Any side effects yet, Robert?”

  “A couple,” I say. “You know. A few. Minor stuff. Nothing I can’t handle.”

  “What are they?”

  I swear she just puckered her lips. She’s unbelievable. She wants me. I’m all over this.

  “Robert?”

  “Huh? Oh yeah. Um. Well, my hair is falling out. Fell out. Everywhere. Almost. Some places still intact. A lot of virile hair still. And, okay, let’s see. Oh. I have bad headaches. And I get nauseous.”

  “How often?”

  “Let’s see. Well, pretty much all the time. Pretty much always.”

  “Does it burn when you urinate?”

  “Me? No. Not at all. Sometimes.”

  “Hemorrhoids?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Do you have hemorrhoids?”

  “No. None. Zero. Clean as a whistle.”

  “Wow. You’re doing incredibly well. Nothing too horrible.”

  “Yeah. Not bad. Piece of cake. I’m very lucky.”

  “That’s it, then. Dr. Mehldau will be right in.”

  She runs her tongue over her top lip, then leans over to give me a glimpse of her world-class boobs. She slowly sashays out of the room.

  Call me, she whispers over her shoulder.

  Okay. I’m pretty sure I made up that last part. I’m so weak and delusional that anything’s possible. A few minutes later, Dr. Mehldau comes in frowning at my chart.

  “No hemorrhoids yet?”

  “I got hemorrhoids like you wouldn’t believe. Killers. It’s like there’s a whole city of miniature pyramids living in my ass.”

  He looks up from the clipboard and stares at me, confused.

  “You told Meredith you didn’t have hemorrhoids.”

  “Have you seen Meredith?”

  “I hired her.”

  “Then you know I can’t tell her I have hemorrhoids.

  ‘Hello, Meredith. I’m Robert. I have a horrible case of hemorrhoids. But I’m horny. Wanna screw?’ I don’t think so.”

  “Yeah. That might hurt your chances with her.”

  I nod. “That’s what I’m saying.”

  He smiles and shakes his head in
what to me looks like amazement.

  I leave Dr. Mehldau armed with a prescription for pain pills, which I fill on the way home—I actually wait in the car and play with the radio while Vicki deals with the pharmacy—then as soon as she hands me the bottle, I pop them like Pez. They work quickly, dialing my pain down from the level of water torture to something more tolerable, say, getting a cavity filled without Novocain. No side effects, either. Well, one.

  Constipation.

  There is nothing worse than having a case of terminal hemorrhoids and being constipated at the same time. I call Dr. Mehldau. And, yes, by now I have him on speed dial. He’s stuck somewhere at Mayo, his nurse says, but she suggests a laxative.

  Which leads to an incident I’d rather forget.

  The bottom line, no pun intended, is that I wake up in the middle of the night with a searing pain in my stomach and an overwhelming and immediate need to take a shit. I lurch into the bathroom, plop down on the toilet, and—

  The next thing I hear is a siren’s warr-warr-warring. When I manage to wake up and force my eyes open, I’m strapped onto a gurney in the back of an ambulance. Two paramedics sit on either side of me. One cups an IV drip that dangles down from a portable rod attached to the ceiling and the other jabs the needle into one of the potholes in my forearm.

  “Don’t tell me,” I say, my voice a hazed-out slur. “I passed out taking a shit.”

  One of the EMTs laughs.

  “Any shot we can keep that between us?”

  I don’t hear any response, but before I drift back off to sleep, I make a mental note that it may not be funny now, but next week I’ll kill when I tell everyone about this in the infusion center.

  Cancer beats the crap out of you. It pounds you with nonstop body shots to your ribs, chest, throat, gut, and head. You are left breathless, afraid to move, because even the slightest motion sends you reeling.

  I am so weak that walking more than three steps leaves me winded, gasping for air. This actually motivates me to set a daily walking goal. I gauge the distance from my front door to the mailbox. I calculate that it’s thirty feet, more or less. My goal, I decide, is to walk to the mailbox and back. Eventually.