Ruth Ann Angus at home after her last chemo treatment. In the days after the treatment she has low energy and spends much of the day on the couch with her cat. Photo by David Middlecamp 01-04-08
The sickness struck less than 24 hours after Ruth Ann Angus’ first chemotherapy treatment and lasted an unrelenting 10 days.
The near immediate rush of nausea, vomiting and exhaustion squashed her hopes that chemotherapy would be only a nuisance — not life-stopping.
Everyone is different, Angus’ oncology nurses and doctor said. Some patients return to work the day of their chemo treatment. Others become so sick they are admitted to the hospital.
Chemo’s side effects confined the 67-year-old Angus to the couch in her Morro Bay home for nearly two weeks.
“I’m not sure this is worth it,” she said the third day after a treatment session.
About 1,400 San Luis Obispo County residents will be diagnosed with cancer this year. While each person’s case is different, Angus’ experience offers a window into the general ordeal of confronting cancer.
After her diagnosis in June, she had two surgeries, battled a nasty infection, and on Nov. 1, had her first chemotherapy treatment. She dreaded three more rounds of chemo and 34 radiation treatments.
She faced five months of feeling too ill to supplement her $1,200 monthly income with freelance photography and writing. Surviving financially worried her nearly as much as surviving cancer. Generous friends
Two days before the first round of chemo, Angus’ red 1995 Pontiac Sunfire broke down.
She needed the car to get to doctor appointments but lacked the $2,150 to fix it. She charged it to her high-interest credit card.
“These are the things you don’t need while you’re going through breast cancer,” Angus said.
Knowing her financial struggles, Angus’ friends at San Luis Sports Therapy threw her a potluck lunch fundraiser on Halloween. More than two dozen friends from Morro Coast Audubon Society, Morro Bay State Park Museum of Natural History and National Estuary Program came to wish her well. Wearing the pink breast cancer ribbon pinned to a red sweater, Angus thanked her friends, starting by quoting a line she heard the night before on a “M*A*S*H” re-run.
“ ‘I don’t care how poor a man is; if he has family he’s rich,’ ” Angus said. “You’re all my family and if it wasn’t for you, I couldn’t get through this. “You go into this completely blind. You think you know how you’re going to deal with something like this, and I guarantee you, you don’t.”
The lunch raised $4,000 — more than enough to fix Angus’ car. That generosity shocked her, as did her landlord’s, when he told her not to worry about her $675 rent for two months.
Releasing anger
Chemotherapy drugs target rapidly growing cancer cells and kill them. Unfortunately, the drugs also affect other rapidly growing cells in the body, such as those in the intestinal tract, blood, nose and hair. That’s why chemo weakens the body’s ability to fight infections and why it makes people feel nauseated and causes their hair to fall out.
The fourth day after chemo, Angus said, was probably the worst.
“Really sick today,” she wrote that day in a journal. “Vomiting all the time all over myself. I’d have to be nuts to go on with this — pumping poison into my body. No more chemo!”
The next day, though, she felt slightly better and decided to wash her pajamas and sheets. While carrying a load of laundry back from the washer and dryer in her detached garage, Angus slipped and fell.
She couldn’t stand up. Angus had untreated scoliosis as a child, and when she was 65, her spine was fused with 10 two-inch bolts. Now, lying on her gravel driveway, Angus called out for help. Fortunately a neighbor heard and called the Morro Bay Fire Department.
Given Angus’ gregarious nature and two decades of living in Morro Bay, she was not surprised to know the responding paramedics, who helped her back to the couch.
Angus was mortified.
That night while watching a movie, the VCR destroyed her videotape. Suddenly and inexplicably, Angus said later, a wave of rage surged through her. She lifted the VCR above her head and threw it on the floor, “smashing it to smithereens.”
She stomped on the machine for several minutes, releasing anger at her cancer with each smash.
“That felt so good,” she said.
Losing hair
Although she was tired, Angus felt well for about a week before she returned for her next chemo treatment three days before Thanksgiving.
That week, she signed up for an American Cancer Society program that reimburses patients for mileage to medical appointments and for the Meals on Wheels senior nutrition program, which delivers pre-made lunches for $2.75 a day.
Angus also chopped off most of her silver hair. The cut was a preventive measure because friends said her hair might start coming out in chunks. Angus feared “looking like a mangy dog.”
She hated the spiky, one-inch-long style and ordered a $38 ash-blond wig to wear when all her hair was gone.
Angus’ second chemo treatment was easier than the first. Her medical oncologist, Thomas Spillane, reduced one of her chemo drugs and gave her a new anti-nausea drug. This time, she never vomited but still felt too ill to enjoy a Thanksgiving feast. She spent the holiday channel-surfing from her couch.
After the second chemo, Angus’ hair fell out rapidly. Each morning, it covered her pillow. Angus shaved it all off and started wearing scarves and her wig.
After her third chemo treatment on Dec. 11, Angus was nearly bald.
“If my eyebrows fall out, I wonder how I’m going to know where to redraw them,” she mused while receiving the chemo drugs intravenously through a catheter in her arm.
After two months of feeling exhausted and ill, Christmas was approaching and Angus fought off feeling depressed. She missed her hobbies: hiking, bird watching and nature photography.
She was tired of being a cancer patient. She grew to detest the color pink for its association with breast cancer and became annoyed with friends who gave her cancer-related Christmas gifts.
“I just want to forget about cancer,” she said.
She still had to finish another round of chemo and seven weeks of daily radiation treatments.
Staff writer Sarah Arnquist has left The Tribune but can be reached at sarnquist@gmail.com.
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