“T-minus seven, before my system shuts down… matter fact, I think I’m ‘bout to shut it down right now…” I sang to myself, as I watched the chemo slowly drip into the IV line that connected to my port. It was about as exciting as watching paint dry, or daytime television.
I’d given up on flipping through the channels and handed the remote to Cary, who had turned on one of those baby shows on TLC. She looked over at me and giggled when she realized what I was singing. “You skipped my favorite part!”
“What’s that?”
“Bang, bang, choo-choo train, baby put that thing on me…” she sang, grinning.
“Girl, I know you ain’t makin’ fun of our lyrics…”
“Of course not,” she insisted sweetly. “They’re, um… catchy!”
I stuck my tongue out at her.
“You must be feeling okay if you’re still up to singing and making faces at me,” she added.
I shrugged. It was still early.
We’d made it to the hospital on time, thanks to Cary hurrying my ass along, and I was admitted to the hematology unit on the sixth floor. The day had started with a blood draw to check my counts before chemo, and once the labwork came back, they hooked me up with that.
Today’s cocktail was laced with a drug I hadn’t had before, something called busulfan. “This one’s a classic,” said the nurse who set up my IV. “It’s been used to treat cancer since the ‘fifties.” I wasn’t interested in a history lesson. I didn’t really want to hear the list of side effects for it, either, but I guess it was her job to tell me before I gave my consent. Seizures were one of the biggies with this one, so before I could get the chemo, I had to take a pill that was supposed to prevent those. I took one for nausea, too, just in case.
You know it’s bad when you need drugs to treat all the problems caused by the drugs that are supposed to treat your cancer. Sometimes I wondered if I’d be better off not taking anything. The whole hippie, holistic route looked pretty tempting right about then. But I gave my consent and put my trust in modern medicine instead. As much as it scared me, I was too afraid not to.
And hey, I gotta hand it to modern medicine – the anti-seizure drug worked. I got through the first dose of chemo without any twitching. I wish I could say the same for the anti-nausea stuff, but just the smell of the lunch tray they brought me at noon was enough to turn my stomach. I spent a good chunk of the afternoon throwing up, or trying not to. Needless to say, I didn’t eat my lunch.
At four o’clock, when the Ellen show came on, my nurse was back to start my second batch of chemo. She looked at me in surprise when she overhead Ellen saying, “… and if you’re a Backstreet Boys fan, you won’t want to miss my exclusive interview with Nick Carter, in which he opens up about the reason for the recent cancellation of their summer tour.”
“Yep,” I said flatly, “that’s me, and this is the reason.” I flicked the piece of tubing she had just plugged into my port.
She smiled, even though I wasn’t really trying to be funny. “I’m sure you’ll be back to touring in no time, once those stem cells work their magic.”
I rolled my eyes at her back when she walked away. They had told me it would take around a hundred days for my immune system to completely recover from this, which meant I wouldn’t be touring again for a long time. Not until after the new year. The cruise was out, too, though we hadn’t made any announcements about that yet. There’d been plenty of speculation, though, after the tour was postponed. The fans were freaking out, and I couldn’t blame them. I wished I hadn’t promised Ellen the exclusive interview, so I could have given them an explanation sooner, but at this point, it didn’t matter. Within the hour, the news would be out, and the secret I’d carried around for so long would be shared with the world. I just had to sit back and watch the fallout from the confines of my hospital bed.
It was weird watching myself on TV. The interview had gone by in a blur, and I’d sort of blocked out most of the details, but I did remember being nervous, like I could shit my pants any second. So I was amazed at how calm and composed I seemed in front of the camera. The stylists on Ellen’s show had worked their magic to make me look healthy, even as I announced that I wasn’t. I looked like I was ready for a photo shoot, not a stem-cell transplant, with my hair styled and my face all bronzed. I hardly recognized myself. Who was that guy? That couldn’t be me.
“…So the official name for what you have is Pre-cursor T-Cell Lymph-o-blastic Lymphoma?” Ellen was asking, making a big production out of squinting at her notes on the card in her hand and struggling to sound out the complicated medical terms. “That’s quite a mouthful. There’s not, like, an easy acronym for that, is there?”
The guy she was interviewing chuckled nervously and rubbed his mouth. Now that looked more like me. “Not that I know of, no.”
“Well, there should be. What would it be?” She looked down at the card again. “P.T.L.L.? Ptll…” she mumbled, stringing all the letters together. “Sounds like ‘piddle.’ So, Nick, you’ve been diagnosed with Piddle?”
I laughed again, both onscreen and in real life. “Um, yeah, I was diagnosed this past spring.”
“And what can you tell us about that? How did you find out?”
“Well, um… I started noticing some symptoms when we were touring overseas – fevers, a nagging cough, some shortness of breath, some chest pain. I was worried, ‘cause I was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy a couple of years ago, so I went and saw my cardiologist as soon as we got back to the States. He said my heart was fine, but noticed a weird mass on the X-rays, so he sent me to a different specialist, who made the diagnosis.”
“And that was in March?” Ellen asked, and I nodded. “So I’m sure your fans are wondering, why did you wait so long to announce this? I mean, people may not know this, but you were out on the road with the Backstreet Boys, touring, working, for the first half of the summer… all while going through cancer treatments behind the scenes, am I right?”
“That’s right.”
“So… what made you decide to keep it a secret and keep working, and why are you finally coming clean and postponing the rest of the tour dates now?”
On TV, I cleared my throat and wiped my mouth again, shifting my weight in my chair. “Well, honestly, I kept it a secret so that I could keep working. I didn’t want to let it affect my whole life and ruin the plans we as a group had made, so I thought I could just tough it out and finish the tour. You know, I’ve been performing professionally since the age of, like, thirteen, so I’m used to going onstage even when I’m under the weather. I just got my treatments on the road, in between shows, and did the best I could to keep up with our schedule.”
“Which is probably pretty grueling, right? I’m sure that wasn’t easy.”
I shook my head, chuckling again. “No. Definitely not.”
“And what kind of treatments are we talking? Chemotherapy?”
“Yeah, chemo. I did six cycles of that, and I just went through a bunch of tests and scans a few weeks ago to see how the cancer responded, and it was successful, so I’m in remission now.”
“That’s terrific news. And you look great, by the way. This is your real hair?” Ellen asked, reaching out to touch my head.
I laughed, ducking my head to let her feel. “Yeah, yeah… I’ve been lucky so far; it hasn’t fallen out.”
“I’m sure your adoring fans are grateful for that. Did you have other side effects, though, from the chemo?”
“Oh yeah… definitely. It was pretty rough.” In the interview, I hadn’t elaborated much, but now I thought back to the mouth sores and diarrhea and constant fatigue, all the fun side effects I had to look forward to again. I’d been nauseous all afternoon, and they had warned me that my hair would probably fall out this time around. I hadn’t bothered to ask Cary for ice; it wasn’t worth it. If I went bald at this point, oh well. I had nothing to hide anymore.
“I’m sure,” Ellen sympathized. “And even though your disease is in remission, you’re not completely done with treatment, correct?”
“Right. I have what’s called a high-grade lymphoma,” I explained, sounding a lot like I actually knew what I was talking about, “which means it’s pretty aggressive and could still relapse and start spreading again, so I’m going to have a stem cell transplant, which will hopefully prevent it from coming back and possibly even cure me. So I’m making arrangements for that right now, and that’s really why we made the decision to postpone the rest of the summer tour dates, so I could get started with that process and get it over with.”
“And what kind of timeframe are you looking at with that? That’s a pretty intense ordeal, isn’t it, a stem cell transplant?”
“Yeah, unfortunately.” I laughed again – I guess I did that a lot when I was nervous, though Ellen made it easy. “Yeah, I’ll probably be in the hospital for a few weeks at the end of August or September for that, and then I’ll finish recovering at home. Hopefully, if all goes as planned, we’ll be able to reschedule those tour dates early next year, but it’s too soon to know for sure right now.”
“Absolutely, and I’m sure your fans understand and just want you to focus on your health, at this point. You’re going to have a lot of people around the world praying for you and wishing you well, and of course, we here on the show wish you the best, too.” Ellen was starting to wrap up the interview. “Nick, thank you so much for taking the time to talk about this,” she said, reaching out to shake my hand. “Good luck with your recovery, and please, keep us posted on how it’s going.”
“Going just swell,” I muttered, looking down at the tube coming out of my chest and the puke basin in my lap.
On TV, the camera had cut back to Ellen in her studio. “That interview was taped back in August, about a month ago, when our show was on hiatus for the summer. We checked in with Nick’s people just this morning, and they confirmed that he is in the hospital right now, getting ready for his stem cell transplant, so we wish him the best with that. Nick, if you’re watching, we’re all anxious to check in with you and see how you’re doing, so if you’re up for calling in or doing a satellite interview from your hospital room, we’d love to have you. After the break, we’ll be back with more special guests and surprises – the good kind, people, I promise, no more bad news – as our VMA wrap-up continues. Stay tuned!”
As the show went to commercials, I looked over at Cary. She gave me a grim smile, her lips pressed tight together. “Well…” she offered.
I sighed. “Shit’s probably hitting the fan right about now. Dare me to check my Twitter?”
She giggled, her smile breaking open. “Could be pretty scary. I bet you’ve got thousands of tweets coming your way already.”
“Yeah… the fans are gonna be flippin’ out.”
“But only because they care about you. You’re going to get all kinds of well wishes and prayers and encouraging thoughts… You really should try to read some of them.”
I have to admit, I was curious. I logged onto Twitter on my iPhone and clicked into my @replies. There were always way too many of them to actually keep up with, but that day, it was insane. I hadn’t even read one of them when a message appeared at the top of the screen to tell me I already had a hundred more new tweets. It would be impossible to read all of them, but I did scroll through a few pages of them. Cary was right; most of them were encouraging messages.
DelphinaCarter @nickcarter Nick I saw the Ellen interview and think you are a strong person to make it this far, it had me in tears. I'm rooting for you to make it :)
MusicAddict90 @nickcarter Nick, we all love you and support you through this horrible trial that you are facing right now. All of us fans are praying for you.
Their heartfelt words made me smile. A few of them even made me laugh.
LenniluvsBrian @nickcarter Nick you've GOT be get well again & be A-Ok!!! Or I'M going after your cancer with my pointy sticks & eliminator ray gun!!! GET WELL!!!!!
ForeverRebel @nickcarter Nick, you're so DRATW, I can't believe this is true...ohhh my god...so intense. Please don't die & become a Zombie Double Rainbow!
Then, of course, there were the overemotional fans who tweeted me in all caps and broken English, who I imagined sobbing over their keyboards, screaming at me to feel better through their computer screens. And then there were the ones who were so desperate, they would even use my illness as a way to get close to me.
KujoBites @nickcarter You should hire someone (me) to document your experience for the fans. I'm a professional photographer, journalist & web designer. Pick me!
I rolled my eyes and showed Cary. She smirked and shook her head. “I’m glad you didn’t reveal that you basically hired me to be with you on the road, or I’d probably have hate tweets coming my way from people like that right about now.”
“Aww… you sayin’ chicks will still fight over a dude with cancer?”
“You bet they will, when that dude is Nick Carter.”
“Even when I got tubes hangin’ out of me and a puke bucket ready to fill up?” I asked, waving the (empty) basin.
“Even then,” she said, smiling, and leaned in to kiss me.
It was a nice gesture, but it would have been a lot nicer if the smell of her cherry Chapstick hadn’t made my queasy stomach start churning again. All of a sudden, I felt the horrible, burning sensation of vomit rolling up my throat, and in desperation, I pushed her out of the way and brought the puke basin up under my chin, just in time.
“Oh no,” I heard Cary say, but she was right there in an instant, rubbing my back as I leaned over and threw up. There was really nothing in my stomach left to barf up, at that point, so it was mostly just thick, slimy strings of drool and stomach acid. Still, I dry-heaved for a few more minutes, until the urge finally passed. Then I slumped back against my pillows, feeling exhausted and embarrassed.
“Sorry ‘bout that,” I mumbled to Cary, who was already at the sink, rinsing out the basin. I felt terrible for hurling after she’d kissed me. What was she supposed to think?
“No, I’m sorry,” she apologized quickly, turning around. When she brought the basin back, I saw that her cheeks were bright red. She looked equally horrified. “I shouldn’t have done that. Are you feeling better?”
No, I thought. My stomach hurt, and my throat burned, and I felt shaky and weak, like I had the flu. But I lied and said, “Yeah, thanks. And don’t be sorry; it ain’t your fault.”
She seemed to accept that, settling back into her chair next to my bed, and we didn’t speak of it again. But I don’t think she ever wore that flavor of Chapstick again, either.
***
