A daughter’s experience at her mom’s bedside in the infusion center
The Petros family after ringing the bell, marking the end of April’s chemotherapy treatment.
April 30, 2022 | Story and photos by Caitlin Petros
A trail of nurses leads my mom through a chemotherapy infusion center with me in tow. White shower curtain partitions separate the patients, each receiving their own personalized drip of toxic cancer killers. Trying not to stare, I steal a glance at their sunken faces; I wonder about their stories. In the infusion room, cancer serves as the great connector – the thing that no one ever wanted but we all somehow share. I spend my time here fighting off the lump in my throat and blinking away steamy tears.
A circular station for nurses and doctors consumes the middle of the room. It’s riddled with papers and computers and IV poles. Patients line the walls in their plastic-covered hospital chairs and face inward. My mom’s personal shower curtain room awaits up ahead with a coveted window view. Months ago, my dad sweet-talked the nurses to seat her there whenever they could.
We have already been here for more than an hour, waiting. Fridays are busy days in the infusion center. Mom sits. I face her in a flimsy chair that feels well-worn. A stiff, circular lump the size of a men’s watch face lies just underneath mom’s skin, an inch below the left collar bone. Her port. She numbed it an hour ago, and now the nurses use a needle to poke and prod it. They will soon inject chemicals into a strong artery close to her heart and pump it throughout her body. I have to look away.
A typical chemo infusion for my barely 5-foot-tall mother looks like one round of anti-nausea medicine and four rounds of chemo, each varying from 45 minutes to an hour and a half – an intense treatment for her stage 1 breast cancer. We are typically the first to arrive at the infusion center and the last to leave.
A symphony of beeps and hushed murmurs compose the continual background noise while nurses shuffle and bounce like pinballs from patient to patient. Mom’s IV flickers and chimes. Hand-delivered from the hospital pharmacy a floor below comes the chemo cocktail, a clear bag plastered with a “Hazard – toxic” warning that is impossible to miss. I watch the nurses pull on gloves that look bulletproof, protecting themselves from the solution that cannot touch their skin. My eyes follow the clear liquid forming a steady drip into the IV line.
Mom’s nurse for the day gently lays a navy blue heated blanket on her lap. It’s easy to get cold when you are sick and have lost all your hair. A pink beanie acts as a stand-in until the hopeful day when mom’s hair sprouts again.
I begin to dig through the green canvas Publix bag that doubles as a suitcase for infusion days like this. To pass the time, I grab a copy of Hamlet that I read in high school, peel open the pages and start from the beginning. Mom puts up with my affinity for Shakespeare as I read aloud in a proper Old English style. I notice that nearby patients listen to my recitation of soliloquies; if only Hamlet knew the crowd he was drawing in the chemo room.
The chemo bags are a clock, each drip draws mom a little closer to healing, in some strange way. We look out a little window and watch the sun lazily drift its daily pattern across the sky. I stare at a bronze bell mounted on the wall; patients get to ring it after their last round of chemo treatment. It seems so far away on the other side of the room. I daydream about the day mom gets to ring the bell herself, but instead, I’m brought back to reality by the mechanical beep of her IV.
While she sleeps, I doodle daffodils, her favorite flower, in my overflowing art journal for her to enjoy when she wakes. I’m sure my drawing will join a gallery of whimsical floral works I’ve painted that overcrowd the space above her medicine station at home. Mom likes to see them every day when she takes her pills. She says it cheers her up.
We pass time late into the afternoon with card games while patients come and go. Peering across the room, I notice a chemo patient, a girl who can’t be much older than me. I wonder if her long black hair is real or a wig, and I have to go to the bathroom to cry.
Eight hours pass, one chemo drip at a time. In three weeks we’ll do it all again.
As we walk outside, our eyes adjust from the fluorescent buzz of the hospital lights to the darkening dusk sky. We can’t wait for the day when we will walk out of the infusion center for the last time.
That day finally came.
Caitlin and her mom April.
Now, almost two years later, I get to sit with mom at our kitchen table that has collected just as many arts and craft stains as treasured memories. Our coffee steam glows in the morning rays. Her ceramic mug, painted with yellow delicate daffodils, is one I got for her as a Mother’s Day gift last year. She uses it every day.
The rhythm of our life, although not back to normal and never completely will be, is recognizable again, though mom’s medicine station is starting to look like a permanent addition to our kitchen, as are the dozens of wigs on styrofoam models in every corner of the house.
At 21, I know too much about cancer. I can’t help but observe strangers in public who look like they’re facing a similar battle. I think about the many faces I saw in the chemo room. Where are they today?
We are lucky that mom had her chance to ring the bell and recover from two surgeries. But we also know there are no guarantees of a cancer-free future, and we take each day with gratitude. The last two years have brought more change for our family of three than ever before. We’ve learned to hug each other a little tighter, linger at our kitchen table for a little longer. And we stop to admire the daffodils along our way.