Jason enjoys a light moment after finishing chemo on January 22, 2004. (Photo by Marley Seaman)

Jason kept quiet when he learned he had cancer.

He told his roommate and a few close friends, but didn’t want everyone to know yet. He didn’t want the good wishes and the condolences and pats on the back and the awkwardness that came with the attention. Steeling himself for a long battle and getting well were enough to worry about. But when the school year resumed, Jason wasn’t there. The news spread quickly.

It was late October when we saw Jason next. He was gaunt and practically bald, but smiling and, like a good theatre major, he held dozens of us captive with his story: the shock of finding out, his fear of dying, and his ultimate optimism. Jason called himself “lucky” to have Hodgkin’s disease because it was so treatable. His visit felt celebratory.

In January, he returned to school, taking classes and trying to live a normal life between chemotherapy treatments. A few weeks into the semester, I accompanied him to his chemo session to take pictures. I learned that the struggle was far from over. Jason was going to live, but the cancer would fight him every step of the way.

It began as a routine visit. I met Jason and a family friend named Susie at the medical center. His health was good, and his sense of humor intact. He kidded that only he could gain weight while battling cancer.

Jason and the nurse, a pretty Asian woman named Tess, narrated for our benefit as they prepared Jason’s arm for the array of chemicals. Tess slathered his arm in iodine and began a saline drip.

Then the tube in Jason’s arm started bubbling. It was a bad sign. They tried two more veins, but neither was useable. Months of powerful chemicals flowing through his veins had caused them to collapse. There would be no treatment today.

Jason was stunned. It was so difficult for him to gear himself up for these grueling treatments. Each one sapped him of energy for four days. The only relief was that with each completed treatment, he came a step closer to finishing. He knew he would not take that step today, and he began to cry. His dark brown eyes full of pain, he blocked his face with his hand as he sniffled. In a few minutes, he’d pulled himself back together, ready to struggle on.

Tess explained that he needed to go to a hospital in Chicago to get a catheter inserted into his arm, bypassing his fragile veins. Jason didn’t seem to care about the details — none of it mattered as along as he could get another session behind him immediately. As we left the medical center, Jason called his mother and relayed the news. He stayed calm, focusing on the procedure and tomorrow’s treatment.

Back in his dorm room, Jason’s fury burst out. He kicked the walls and complained to his roommate about “My fucking veins,” and how they were damaged like those of a heroin addict.

The anger revealed his feelings before he’d gathered his optimism. He couldn’t hide it now. Most dominant was the frustration: In his voice were hundreds of hours spent wondering why this had to happen to him.

The five-year survival rate for Hodgkin’s patients was 95 percent. At age 20, he’d had to contemplate being in that other 5 percent. What he had told us about luck was true, and he meant it. But he cannot have felt lucky back then, hearing about the cancer spreading through his lymphatic system and about the side effects of chemotherapy.

By winter, his eyebrows, mustache and goatee, like the hair on his head, had turned to wisps. As the treatments progressed, he felt worse. The recovery periods following the chemo got longer and longer. Weekends were a distant memory; it took nearly a week to fully bounce back from treatments, which left him seven days until the next treatment. The chemicals began to make him throw up one week, and that pattern would continue.

Jason’s buoyant nature made us overlook the difficulties he faced. He did not deceive us, but we saw mainly the optimism — not the arduous process by which he had reached it. We took it for granted.

The day after the failed chemotherapy attempt, Jason and Susan were late for his next treatment session. When he got there, he had a bandage on his left arm. A wire now ran from just above his elbow into his heart. The catheter extruding from his sore arm was a mix of clear tubing and blue and white plastic, a small monstrosity he would cover with a slice of a cotton sock. The cancer within his body now had an obvious external marker. He said he would have it removed the day after his last session, but it stayed in his arm for weeks after that.

Jason apologized again and again that the treatment was boring. Compared to the ordeal the previous day, this session was a gift. The doctor and nurses came back on schedule to make conversation and change the I.V. medication drips. Jason complained bitterly about Adriamycin, the powerful chemical that made him vomit the previous week.

Adriamycin was a radioactive, candy red color. It looked strange vanishing into the veins of a human being — it would have been more in place attached to a car in a body shop. Its taste permeated Jason’s mouth from when the second the drip started until it was unhooked. He screwed up his face and sipped on a soda to counteract it. The treatment passed comfortably.

We walked home, and he collapsed for the weekend.

Jason allowed me to tag along for his chemo session two weeks later. It, too, was uneventful, and he slept for its last hour. Two weeks later, parents, stepparents, and friends flew into town for his last treatment. His girlfriend decorated his doorway and hall with banners.

“Last treatment ever!”  

“NO more weeks!”  

There was even a cake that read “Fuck Cancer.”

The story isn’t over, but the news is all good. The radiation therapy, sunburns aside, did not cause Jason much trouble. In the spring, he continued taking classes and directed a production of Taming of the Shrew.

He will need regular checkups for the next few years, and though he cannot overlook it, the chances of his cancer recurring are very low.

He is 21 and healthy, and much the same person he was before, though having his life so far out of his hands has made him a little more patient with situations he can’t control.

Even if he doesn’t know it, through his illness he has found a real strength — the kind found by plumbing the depths of one’s own weakness — that will never leave him.

STORY INDEX

TOPICS > HODGKIN’S DISEASE

How Hodgkin’s disease is diagnosed
URL: http://www.cancer.org/docroot/cri/content/cri_2_2_3x_how_is_hodgkins_disease_found_20.asp

Information on Hodgkin’s disease
URL: http://www.cancer.gov/cancerinfo/wyntk/hodgkins

Treatment of Hodgkin’s disease in adults
URL: http://www.cancer.gov/cancerinfo/pdq/treatment/adulthodgkins/patient/

In The Fray Contributor