Shot of Love

Yeah, my wife's chemotherapy has its perks. Free soda at the clinic. The boss goes easy on me at work. Scores of donated casseroles. Sure, it sounds glamorous.
But it's actually not that great. And by 'not that great', I mean 'awful'.
I don't mean to whine. She's on the road to recovery, everything is going well and her spirits are high. And she refuses to complain about it. So I will complain for her.
The treatments themselves aren't too bad. We get to sit in a room with a recliner and a television. They administer the medicine through a slow IV drip that takes about five hours so I fall asleep while she watches Oprah.
And the side affects don't seem to bother her all that much. She knows that every other weekend, she'll sleep until noon. She'll take two more three-hour naps and go to bed at eight. She knows she'll have nausea and her hair will soon fall out. These things we can handle. It becomes a routine. That's probably what keeps us sane.
But when it becomes unpredictable, that's when I start to fall apart. You see, chemo screws with your immune system. It inhibits the ability of your bone marrow to produce white blood cells needed to fight infection. So before every treatment she has blood work done to determine if she's okay for her weekly dosage. If untreated, she becomes vulnerable to any number of unseen pathogens that you or I could fight off with no problem.
There are only two things in this world that scare me. MRSA is one of them (crickets are the other thing, but that's a story for another day). Or if not specifically MRSA, then some unseen communicable killer that goes unnoticed until it's too late. See TB, meningitis, etc. I work in that field, so I have a unique awareness of these types of diseases and their prevalence. In any case, due a low blood count, infection becomes a heightened risk when your immune system is weakened.
Therefore, to stimulate the production of infection-fighting white blood cells, she gets a shot every day. Because it's not practical to visit the clinic everyday for injections, they come in take-home syringes. And because my wife does not fear MRSA (or crickets), but needles, guess who gets to administer the shots? Yeah, this guy (I'm pointing at my chest with my thumbs).
So every evening at six, I get to play doctor with my wife. And not in the good way. I take an inch-long needle and stick it in her thigh, belly, arm, or whatever body part de jour that she thinks will be least painful.
I do this quite confidently - with all the panache and verve of a failed pre-med major (I'm pointing at my chest with my thumbs). Never once do I let the shadowed look of horror darken my visage (spent some time as a failed English major as well). I gather my courage and swallow my revulsion. And with a smile, comforting I hope, I do my business.
And it kills me.
The medicine burns when it goes in. Add in her healthy squeamishness of all-things-sharp and protruding, and you have yourself a heapin' helpin' of horrible.
It's over in a few seconds, but it honestly hurts me infinitely more than it hurts her. And it hurts her pretty badly.
The only consolation is I can say that I'm helping her get better. I'm facilitating some small part of her recovery. But the truth is, I'd rather stick that needle in my own eyeball than poke her with it. I've said before that I'd give anything to be the one who has to go through this. I'd trade places with her in a minute. In a second. Without hesitation.
But I can't.
So I do the best I can with what she's got.