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At first, Mark Shurtleff joked with his wife and doctor, talked with some local television stations and set up a Skype account on his iPhone while the poison dripped silently through a clear tube and into his chest.
A few hours later, the nausea had crept up on him and the chills were significant enough that he was covered in a blanket while reclining in the white chair inside the Jordan Valley Hospital.
"And so it begins," M'Liss Shurtleff said.
The attorney general began chemotherapy Monday morning to battle the colon cancer he was diagnosed with last month. While his most recent PET Scan — an imaging technique to show a 3-D picture of the insides of the body — was clear of cancer, the chemotherapy is being used to ensure no stray cancer cells are roaming around.
Shurtleff will have 11 more treatments administered by Utah Cancer Specialists, and each treatment will require him to go home with a pack that drips the chemotherapy directly into his system for 48 hours.
Richard Frame said the treatment against stage-three cancer is "aggressive." Without the treatment, the physician said, there would be a 41 percent chance that Shurtleff would die within five years. With it, his survivability odds increase by another 17 percent.
Shurtleff's wife said he was doing well leading up to Monday's treatment. She said Wednesday had been the toughest day because that was when he underwent an outpatient surgical procedure during which doctors inserted a small port in his chest where the needle from the IV could be easily injected.
"You're part of the brotherhood now," Frame said. "Soon you'll be mingling with other people going through their treatments as well."
Shurtleff said he hoped to raise awareness for others by encouraging them to get checked by their doctors more frequently, and he is also planning to start his yet-to-be-named cancer blog so others can learn from his experience.
"There are a lot of people more sick than me," Shurtleff said. "I want people to reach out and help them."
The 53-year-old said he's been reading blogs by other cancer survivors and has drawn strength from their experiences, and he is hoping to visit with cancer patients in Las Vegas in February.
Shurtleff said he has thought a lot about the limitations the chemotherapy could place on him, including his ability to do work. It's why he set up a Skype account on his iPhone and tested it out Monday morning with a staffer so he could participate in a budget hearing Tuesday if he wasn't feeling well enough to get to the Capitol.
"I don't want to be so sick and weak I can't do anything," he said. "I don't want that to be me."
But Frame — along with Shurtleff's staff — has urged the high-energy attorney general to curtail his schedule. Easier said than done, according to his spokesman Paul Murphy.
"I can make suggestions, but the options about what he's going to do are up to him," Murphy said.
Shurtleff admitted he doesn't like to say "no" to things. He's still scheduled to talk to students this week at Taylorsville High School and it remains on his calender, even though he knows there's a chance he might not feel up to it.
He plans on taking part in a debate on immigration reform on Jan. 21 and is counting on the fact that, based on the treatment schedule, he should feel strongest then.
But it's that uncertainty that makes the whole process most difficult for him.
"The not knowing is frustrating for me," Shurtleff said. "Not knowing how badly I'm going to feel is difficult."
Frame said there are things he will watch for as Shurtleff goes through the process, including blood clots forming in the leg that shattered when Shurtleff suffered a motorcycle accident more than three years ago. That leg still swells up, and the chemotherapy could exacerbate it.
Frame said he will continue to monitor and adjust the dosage after the first few treatments based on any side effects.
Cancer screening
Physicians typically recommend screening for colon cancer at age 50, or earlier for someone with a family history of the disease.