Cancer Treatment

So I guess I do some pretty random things.  I spent 12 hours yesterday with someone I hadn't seen in six years, driving through the traffic and rain in the Bay Area.  He needed someone to accompany him to his cancer treatment in San Francisco on short notice, and since I was free that day, I offered to go.  We have had pretty much no contact over the last few years, but once a camp friend, always a camp friend.  And Facebook has a strange way of facilitating those random connections at unexpected times and places.  I met up with another friend from Arizona a few years ago, when we both happened to be visiting PA at the same time.

Anyhow, the long gap in communication didn't present an issue, and we struck up a conversation as if it had only been since last week.  But luckily we had a lot to talk about, since rainy traffic left us on the road for hours longer than expected in each direction.  When we actually got to his appointment, it felt a bit strange to me to be in a cancer research center, realizing that most of the people sitting around me had serious forms of terminal cancer.  Everyone I know is dying to some degree, but most of us at a much slower rate than certain others.  That is a lot more clear in an environment like that.

I was actually sitting right there for an hour and a half as they drew blood and gave him chemical transfusions, as he drifted in and out of consciousness due to the effect of the drugs.  I was trying to read a book the whole time, but was frequently distracted from that by people coming and going, both the patients moving to the overstuffed chairs overlooking the city while they got their transfusions, and the staff that attended to them.

As we were leaving, I overheard an elderly gentleman talking to someone else in the waiting room, "this chemo process can be rough, but it is better than the alternative.  Back in the day they just sent you home to wait to die."  Most of the patients were much older than my friend, and I hope the only younger person I saw was there for his parent.  But many of them appeared to be in their forties and fifties, and looked fairly "normal," not as I would have anticipated a cancer patient to look.  It makes you wonder how many other people are dealing with that, and just not sharing it with others.

I also came to realize that the drugs they were dealing with in that facility are very expensive, to the point of shipping one dose at a time, and ordering what is needed for every appointment they schedule, instead of drawing from a stockpile on hand.  The pharmaceutical industry involves a lot of money, because the cost of the equipment they use, and the amount of testing they do.  So it is to be expected that the drugs will be expensive.  And I don't think there is much issue of abuse of these items, since no one is going to get addicted to the "kick" of chemotherapy.  Hopefully we will have better solutions in the future, as further research is developed and ideas are tried.