Cut the mustard

15 YEARS AGO, I got an interesting history lesson.

My story continues at a cancer clinic in Fayetteville (Ark., where I lived at the time). I’m sorry to seem ungrateful to the person who (with the help of his friendly staff) saved my life, but I totally forgot my oncologist’s name.

Anyway, he had the results of my tests (confirmation of Stage II Hodgkins) and came up with a strategy for attacking the dread disease. Like an extra on “ER,” I have since totally forgotten the jargon of what the components of my treatment were. But because I know any readers here would be curious – and because I felt kinda curious myself – I did some looking on the Internet.

For the sake of this memoir, wikipedia will do. Since the cancer was aggressive in confining my lungs, I was to undergo an aggressive treatment, a one-two punch of chemotherapies: MOPP (Mustargen Oncovin Procarbazine Prednisone)
and ABVD (adriamycin, bleomycin, vinblastine and dacarbazine). According to the wiki, the latter is now used in place of the former, but at the time it was a newer cocktail, and the doc felt the older, harsher mix was better for attacking the malignancy. Each has its own side-effects, the doctor explained, and going half-and-half should reduce the severity of any given effect.

Note the “M” in MOPP is “Mustargen,” which looks like “mustard.” That’s not a coincidence; it is actually derived from mustard gas.

According to the oncologist, during research between World Wars I and II on the deadly chemical agent, it was discovered that it was particularly deadly to Hodgkins cancer cells. Thus did a horrific weapon of the first world war evolve into one of the first successful cancer cures.

This also brings home the point of how chemotherapy works. Chemo is basically poison. While it can destroy all manner of cells, the normal ones can be replenished through the body’s healing process, while the malignant cells aren’t. Meanwhile, well, you’re being poisoned! Thus the side-effects, and the fact that even an “easy” treatment like mine isn’t fun.

My regimen was to take six months. If successful, I would undergo six weeks of radiation treatments to clear out what bad cells were left. The chemo pattern was two weeks on, two weeks off. During those two weeks of intravenous treatments and the third week of the drugs working their way out of my system, I had strict dietary restrictions (this left one week a month, which became known as “cheese week” – I’ll make a separate posting on that eventually).

Expected side-effects included extreme fatigue and mental weirdness, loss of hair and suppression of sperm count if not sterility. Because of the half-and-half approach the degree of these effects should be lessened, but still impossible to predict.

Also, after making note of my weight, the oncologist ordered me to gain more. In fact, if my weight ever went down during treatment, it would be a sign that the chemo wasn’t working. Looking over my gut now, I know that having a license to pork up is not as cool as you might think.

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