I Feel Like a Virgin Again After Radiation
What's a Good Playlist for Fighting Cancer?
Turns out you can request songs during radiations treatments. But, what to selection?
After a recent diagnosis of the tiniest fleck of Stage ane invasive breast cancer, I was prescribed four weeks of daily radiations treatments. Before I started the monthlong Monday-to-Fri slog, a variety of nurses and doctors warned me about side furnishings to expect—mostly tiredness and the sort of sunburn i might get after sunbathing topless and drunk (not their words). Several people even mentioned that the radiation technicians might ask what music I'd like to listen to while on the table; the literature that got sent home with me, and which I'd actually read, also noted this. And yet, on Day 1 of my treatments, I turned upwards entirely unprepared.
This should non take been the case! I love music! I mean, who doesn't … except, well, I really do! I used to brand my living as a music journalist. I own everything from the Smithsonian jazz drove to the Nuggets four-disc compilation of psychedelic popular. So I surprised myself when, on 24-hour interval 1, I high-strung and muttered, "Classical?"
The technician, a center-aged British woman named Heather, asked, "Anything specific?" and I made the mistake of saying no.
I don't honey the Nutcracker on a skilful day—even when watching a wonderful live production of it during the holidays with my delighted daughters. And then for the relentlessly lively strings of "The Russian Dance" to pour into the room while technicians lined a machine upwardly to the small marker tattoos I'd been given the calendar week before, well, it but seemed cruel. Mercifully, treatments but last a few minutes.
When I left the room, I resolved that tomorrow I'd do better.
I requested Hamilton.
Heather happily complied, but I quickly realized I didn't desire to spoil "My Shot" past having it tied to radiations. It would exist foolish to choose favorite songs, wouldn't it? That meant "Drive It Like You Stole It" from Sing Street was out; likewise, anything off Lost Friends past the Australian ring Heart Kids, which was in heavy rotation in my life at the time.
I was still without a playlist when I arrived on Twenty-four hours 3, so when Heather asked if the '80s hits station she had playing was fine, I said sure.
Foreigner's "I Desire to Know What Love Is" came on. It made me feel … erstwhile. I lay in that location thinking virtually how I was 14 when that song came out. Fourteen! Barely breasted! All the same, I felt lighter knowing that this was Heather'due south default mode. The '80s seemed like a safe place, provided The Joshua Tree didn't come on.
Twenty-four hours 4 brought Cyndi Lauper's "Fourth dimension Later on Time," perfectly benign and lovely and correct. Then Solar day v caught me off guard because there was a new technician and she didn't take requests, but she had some jazz playing so whatever. One calendar week down and iii to get, plus I had the weekend off! Next week, though. Adjacent week I'd have a playlist. I had the whole weekend to figure information technology out.
Here'south the thing virtually U2'southward The Joshua Tree: The universe and I conspired to brand it the soundtrack for my mother's decease by breast cancer when I was xvi. It was 1987 and U2 was just … everywhere. For me, anyway. They were on the radio of the yellowish sports car driven by my boyfriend of several months, who would presently prove unsuited for the job of dealing with my grief. They were piped into stores at the Staten Island Mall, where I shopped for funeral clothes with my godmother. Manifestly, I'd bought the anthology and practically worn it out on the record player in my sleeping accommodation. It was in heavy rotation when my mother was in the infirmary, and even when she was in a infirmary bed in the living room waiting to die. The songs sank into me so securely that summertime that even years later on, when I'd be driving and hear one on the radio, I'd think for a second that I might take to pull over and weep.
When that effect subsided, I started to have a vocal from The Joshua Tree coming on as a sign from across. It was my mom sending a bulletin when a DJ dropped "With or Without You" after I'd simply been dumped. Information technology meant she idea he wasn't right for me anyway. It was my mom talking to me on the BQE when I sabbatum stalled in traffic running belatedly for a task interview, telling me I didn't actually desire the task via "I Still Haven't Plant What I'1000 Looking For." Who needed a mother when you had U2 songs?
I'd been reassured past my medical team that my cancer was totally treatable, past the way—caught then very early, unlike my mother'southward. But I still worried what might get of my daughters should I repeat my mother's fate. What would their soundtrack be? It was Lion King season for the girls in their musical theater school. Would "I Just Can't Look to Exist King" and "Hakuna Matata" terminate up being their trigger music? I couldn't stand the thought of that. I owed them better than no worries for the remainder of their life. So I resolved that if it ever came to that I'd make them a playlist for surviving because that's what The Joshua Tree had always felt like for me.
I did not, nonetheless, want that playlist in the treatment room.
Heather put Hamilton on once again on Monday without asking, and it felt foolish to defection. Tuesday was some '80s song I don't recall, and and then on Wednesday—Mean solar day 8—there was a surprise guest from the '70s in Heather's '80s mix. It was a hilariously bad song to have come on, given the circumstances—a song by a ring I'd seen alive at Madison Square Garden with my parents in 1977 when I was just 7 years quondam, a ring my female parent had loved.
It was the Bee Gees. "Stayin' Alive."
I mean, Come ON! Information technology was so wrong it was correct. Since my husband and I had been using a fair amount of gallows humour (onco-jokes, nosotros called them) as a coping mechanism, nosotros had a good express joy. I fifty-fifty texted some friends near it, and everyone was suitably horrified.
Things got fifty-fifty funnier when "The Final Countdown" came on the side by side day. I lay there unable to remember whether it was Asia or Europe who'd recorded it—a continent, at any rate—and couldn't wait to be done so I could tell my friends.
If Heather had been at that place on that Friday—Day ten—I would have requested Bon Jovi's "Living on a Prayer," considering I was halfway there, but it was the jazz lady over again.
The post-obit Mon, Heather went back to Hamilton but wanted to vary the runway for me and then, for reasons that are however unclear, resorted to YouTube. The music cut out at some signal and was replaced past the audio of small children doing some kind of unboxing, their voices mostly inaudible.
Tuesday was Madonna—"Similar a Virgin," which fabricated it hard non to laugh. By this point in my wee cancer journey, I'd been touched—my chest anyway—by so many people that I'd lost count. Meanwhile, since I was finally experiencing some side effects, I mused almost requesting the Violent Femmes—"Blister in the Sun." I didn't and was instead treated to an international twofer of "Land Down Under" and "Ane Night in Bangkok." Then it was jazzy Friday again and I was three-fourths done.
We'd taken a quick vacation before radiation, since in that location was a school break on the agenda and there was no point in sitting effectually dreading the month of treatments. Our Palm Springs risk was plagued with problems (that's another essay), just the 1 thing that went well was a daytrip to Joshua Tree National Park. It was a sort of bucket-list destination for me fifty-fifty though I knew that the photograph on the album wasn't really taken there.
Nosotros almost messed things upward entirely, though. When nosotros set out that morn, I got into the car, realized our mistake, and said, "Shoot."
My hubby, in the driver's seat, said, "What?"
"I was going to download The Joshua Tree."
He nodded once. "I'll wait."
I went dorsum into the hotel lobby to hop on the Wi-Fi.
It's probably a airheaded thing to exercise, to cue up The Joshua Tree at the gates of Joshua Tree. We did it anyway. And when I heard the opening notes of "Where the Streets Accept No Name," the usual flood of emotions that that glorious intro commonly washes over me had the crest of a new sensation: I felt powerful.
I felt like I wasn't going to dice, except that we're all going to die, and then I also felt like information technology would exist fine if I did, considering that was life and there was no logic to it. There seems also to be no logic to Joshua trees. Their blooms, if you want to call them that, are random seeming—sprouting wherever they desire—and their joints and bends arbitrary. Each individual tree—who knew there'd be and so many of them?—looks like a thing that should not exist at all (like united states of america?). The whole park is magical, really—otherworldly, in the true sense of the word. The twenty-four hours felt like visiting several afar planets, each more surprising than the next. We listened to the whole Joshua Tree album. Twice. The children didn't fifty-fifty mutter near it (magical!).
Nosotros brought colored pencils and a sketch pad to dinner that nighttime, to entertain the 8-year-quondam. We all drew Joshua trees. I'd never felt more fully alive.
When I was down to my quaternary and terminal week, I was beyond excited, fix to be done with all of this. Just when I walked into the handling room, the vibe was all wrong: "And he shall alive forever and always …"
"Really?" I said to Heather. "The 'Hallelujah' chorus?"
"Oh, I'll modify it," she said. "The last person requested information technology."
She set me up with '80s—A-ha and "Take On Me"—and that was fine. I lay there wondering if I could still play information technology on the pianoforte and also wondering what kind of person requests Handel's Messiah during radiation—had I passed him or her in the waiting room? And so I wondered whether I'd gone near the whole affair incorrect. Maybe I should have been loading my brain up with positive letters through song the entire time—even keeping with the '80s theme for Heather: "Milkshake the Disease" by Depeche Fashion, or Elton John's "I'm Nevertheless Standing" or Matthew Wilder'south "(Ain't Nada Gonna) Break My Stride."
Or peradventure I should have gone the other way and specifically requested tracks from The Joshua Tree every day and somehow tapped into all the fear and grief and maternal connection and (at present) power that it held for me. It wouldn't ruin the album—information technology was already ruined (but also not ruined because it'due south still one of my favorite albums of all fourth dimension, considering … how could it non exist?).
Either way, at the end of the session, I was washed with Heather, as I would movement onto a different machine for the concluding four more targeted zaps. She wished me well, and I thought I might cry and told her I hoped to never encounter her again.
The vibe on the "heave" automobile was sort of a shock to the organisation after all this: OLDIES! Ritchie Valens and "Donna." What a revelation. I had been doing it all wrong, but not in the ways I'd thought. I should accept had fluffy '60s ditties spinning the whole time.
I was and then close to stop of the iv weeks at present that I started to feel giddy. That erstwhile Fountains of Wayne vocal "Radiation Vibe" popped into my head—don't information technology make you wanna go some sun?—and I started playing information technology over and over and over and over.
Shine on! Smoothen on! Shine on!
I spoke to Bono on the phone once. It was the yr later on I'd graduated college, and I was living away, working at a music magazine in Dublin. For whatever reason, the receptionist wasn't at the forepart desk. I picked up and said, "Hot Printing," and the person said, "Yes, can I speak with Niall Stokes, delight?"
"Can I tell him who'south calling?" I asked.
He said, "Bono."
I put him on hold and watched the blinking light for a long moment. I wanted to selection the phone back up and tell him everything. About the useless swain with the yellow car and the awful floral skirt I'd ended upward ownership for the funeral and how The Joshua Tree had somehow managed, over fourth dimension, to make that almost unimaginable loss manageable.
I put the call through.
You get to ring a bell on the wall in the waiting area when you consummate your treatments. People bring their family and friends and everyone waiting claps for y'all. And then my husband came with me on my last twenty-four hour period. He filmed me ringing the bong and waving so we could bear witness our girls, and the waiting room erupted in applause. The treatment music had been disappointing jazz, just it didn't thing; I felt once more the style I had when I'd arrived at the gates of Joshua Tree with the family I'd created in the wake of that awful loss of my youth listening to the exact right music.
I felt old and young and alive and random and in control and out of control. I felt relieved and afraid and strong and even sort of wise. I felt like going to bed or dancing. I felt similar blasting music—whatever music—with the windows downwardly on a highway through the desert.
The Joshua tree in the photograph on U2's anthology was actually at Zabriskie Signal in Death Valley National Park. The band was on a road trip betwixt Reno and Joshua Tree and stopped along 190 when their photographer Anton Corbijn spotted the lone tree. Joshua trees usually grow in clusters, and so the isolated tree was an anomaly. The album hadn't been named yet.
It'due south dead at present, that tree. Felled by winds in 2000. My cancer, which was also hopefully an anomaly, is expressionless now, besides.
Life doesn't always paw yous a playlist. Simply it does, on occasion, requite you just the right metaphor.
Source: https://slate.com/technology/2019/07/radiation-therapy-playlist-choices-music-cancer.html
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