Video Chats with my Oncologist

Christy Lorio

photo credit: Christy Lorio

At the end of February, the entire city was reveling at Mardi Gras. I was four months into chemo treatments, my second go ‘round after having been diagnosed with stage IV rectal cancer two summers ago. I desperately needed to indulge in Carnival and all of the parades, parties and pageantry that comes with it. The term “Corona Virus,” to say nothing of the more technically precise COVID-19, was just a whisper during carnival season. Sure, some people dressed up in Corona costumes, but none of us were fully cognizant of the already insidious presence of the virus among us, not even the mayor.

My life hasn’t drastically changed in the presence of COVID-19.  I’ve been on disability for a few months now, but now I do have even fewer options. The city shut down and is slowly opening back up. Still, “open” is relative, meaning no more lingering at coffee shops or bars. All major festivities have been cancelled through the end of the year. People can’t be trusted to social distance on their own. Before the reopening, while our St. Patrick’s Day parades were cancelled before the surge in deaths, revelers still bar-crawled through the Irish Channel, culminating in a massive block party at Tracey’s bar. Police eventually broke up the crowd, but not before the bar’s owner took to Twitter to attack critics.  

I was one of those “critics.” The bar blocked me after I relayed that, as a cancer patient, I didn’t appreciate my life being put at risk for the sake of a party. They should’ve known better, I thought.

Maybe we all should have known better, but we didn’t.

As we gathered for Mardi Gras, frozen drinks in hand, I donned a cobalt-blue wig, which covered my bald head as I held out a homemade sign – Cups > Cancer – asking float riders to toss me one of their most coveted throws. Soon, those purple, green and gold decorations had were packed up, replaced with sidewalk chalk drawings ranging from hopscotch squares to laments of I miss sno-balls, that sugary, shaved-ice treat New Orleanians know and love.

And now, those lamentations have been replaced with “Black Lives Matter” and memorials to George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, dislodging the COVID from the headlines. Just the other night, at least a thousand people amassed on the interstate to protest police violence. I watched the footage from home, wishing I could do something more, but I’m still confined, given my immunocompromised status. While protestors were demonstrating, I was at my doctor’s office, yet again, being checked to make sure my cancer hadn’t spread, yet again.

I worry. I worry – and I know – that this surge in protests will in some way contribute to a surge in COVID-19—but I also know that it’s exactly because the cause is so urgent that people are willing to risk their health  to incite change.

I’m still getting cancer treatments, which exacerbates the stress of social isolation. I send my husband out for groceries while I stay home. I pick up takeout and order groceries for delivery, reasoning that less people have come into contact with my food. When I walk into my hospital’s cancer treatment center, instead of being warmly greeted with a smile from the receptionists and nurses, all I see is their eyes; masks obscure part of their faces.

I have video chats with my oncologist instead of seeing her in person. She showed me her dog. I showed her my kitten. Her older patients show her photos of their grandkids and want to give her a tour of their homes. I find it adorable.

I just graduated. My husband and I had booked a cruise to celebrate the completion of grad school and getting through two years of cancer treatments. We’re not “cruise people” per se. I just wanted to sit down and relax. But there is no celebration for me, at least not yet. My cohort’s commencement ceremony has been cancelled. So has my cruise. My oncologist tells me that I’ll most likely be finished with my treatment this month, for now.

All I wanted was a nice quiet summer.

Christy Lorio is a recent graduate of the The University of New Orleans MFA in Creative Writing and she will be entering UNO’s MFA in Photography in the fall. Her work has been featured in French Quarter Journal, Barren Magazine and Oxford American, among others. A New Orleans area native, Christy liked to photograph the swamps she grew up in and is currently revising her thesis: Big Infinity: My Cancer Journey, an essay collection. 

A Note from our editors: while we have resumed publishing general submissions, 433 nonetheless remains committed to supporting the current protests and the larger movement to end police brutality and fight for a more equitable system. Read our statement on how we plan to offer support here.