CANCER WEEK
So, two of my pens died on me today.
And three of my patients.
All
cancer.
ATTACK OF THE CLONES
Mr. Bears was one of those Lion’s Club lodge members with the cheesy moustaches. Acute leukemia filled his marrow. He’s been in the hospital for two months, maybe three, trying chemo after chemo treatment until the oncologist told him this weekend that there’s no more chemo left to give. The bone marrow biopsy was filled with just as many cancer cells as it was in the beginning.
This morning I got called to pronounce him dead. His chubby wife was at his side.
“He was breathing all rattley, and then it stopped,” she told me. “His mom and his brother died this year. I can kind of read the signs now … Oh my God that sounds horrible.”
That sounds like a doctor.
“It’s
weird, he was just walking in the halls a few days ago…,” the clerk said to me
as I tried to fill in the cause of death.
"Can I borrow your pen. Mine just died." ... Oops.
Yesterday he told me, “I’m fine.”
Was that you or those billions of clone cells in your marrow speaking for you, Mr. Bears. Time to go where everyone knows your name.
Mr. Nosferatu was a 65-year mathematician of great reknown in the realm of numbers. His number came up when he turned yellow a week ago, and oh, by the way, his back was hurting too. MRI showed a lesion in his lumbar vertebra. Further scans revealed exponentially more lesions.
He was quite a sight. His eyes were opaque nil – he was blind since age eight and yet was some kind of math theory genius. Veins trickled under his bald jaundiced scalp, dried blood caked his lips due to his low platelet count.
“We got the results from your scans back,” I told him. The blind professor practically exhaled dust and said what no other cancer patient has ever ventured to say to me before,
“It is bad news. I can tell from your voice.”
Yeah,
“widespread cancer,” coming from the radiologist no less. Don’t even need a
real doctor to diagnose this one. (I’m kidding! I love radioholidayologists! :-)
The otolaryngologist got mad at me for consulting him to clean out the patient’s deaf ear (especially on a Friday!). I tried squirting water in his ear myself with no result. Then I had to tell the son (who was my age) what the ENT doc told me.
“He can see me in the office,” the ENT doc huffed to me. No, he’s dead now. He’ll see you in hell.
His owl-like wife recalled, “He always wondered if his work had any practical significance. When we mentioned the MRI, he said – my math helped create Magnetic Resonance Imaging.”
Shortly after, all of his vital signs went back to zero, the mortal common denominator. Good night, Count.
Patient known to you: Mr.Moonlightsonata. (If I’d known I was going to write
about him again, I would have picked a better name. I think I initially picked it because he was pale from his anemia.)
Well, he got one week of chemo and did great with it. His repeat bone marrow was completely free of leukemia cells. He won!
Unfortunately it was also completely free of infection-fighting white cells too.
He got septic (blood infection) with shit bacteria, and not just any shit bacteria. This was VRE – which stands for Very Resistant to Everything – no, actually it stands for Vancomycin Resistant Enterococcus. There’s one antibiotic you can use against it, but one big gun doesn’t do well when the cavalry’s been wiped out with “friendly fire” chemo.
They prayed and prayed that he would beat the cancer. And he did. He WON. But a contract is a contract, whether it’s with a lawyer, God, or the Devil, there’s always that fine print. It’s the little things (microbes) that get you in the end (colon).
“How long do you think he’s got, a few days even?” the doting wife asked in the ICU waiting room.
I was thinking “We won't be talking about this in 24 hours,” but I just said,
“Less than a day.”
BOOM. Even those quiet words flattened them like The Word of God. That was optimistic. He died two hours later.
I felt a little bit too much of their loss today. Dipped a little too much into the empathy pool. Wondering what is this gentle woman going to do? These great college-aged kids lost their father. I liked him. I lost my dad too but I have no words of wisdom to get over this. “Don the blackest most hateful armor your soul can spew and scream at the world with every unuttered thought” isn’t exactly guidance counselor advice.
When I see sons with their sick dads now, I think of Sun Su and me. When I see old wives watching their husbands die, I think of Amy and me. A heartbreaking ending is the definition of every form of true love. It’s inevitable. Why is love a good thing again?
The
past three weeks have been hard. I had one day off and I almost got my arm
broken that day (and it was my BEST day this month, another
entry). I’m tired. I have a cold. Emotional immune system down.
Reminds
me of this old lady whose husband died two months ago. She said,
“It
wouldn’t be so hard if he [her husband] was a bad man, but ….”
There's something to be said for being a bad man, I guess.
.