For a moment I was worried that it wasn't there. But then I saw it tucked in a corner against the sugar smeared glass. The last one.
It was a grossly plump cinnamon bun covered in thick glaze. It dwarfed the chocolate covered donut next to it. I smiled when I saw it and then patiently waited my turn. Tapping on the glass, I told the woman in the food cart, "Give me the big one." These sugary grotesques are my antidote to Sloan Kettering. Just going there leaves me with a bone deep sadness. The emotion always surprises me, leaves me baffled. I wrestle with it and conclude each time that it's not the prognosis that puts me in a funk. The prospect of dying, I am certain, does not upset me. At times I even think, "Good." I’m tired of this disease, the needles, and the godawful side effects. It's what will happen between now and then that I find unnerving. Today's visit included a new shot, this one in the stomach. (To go along with the one in the butt and the radium IV through the back of my hand.) Each has side effects. And each has a limited time it can be used, meaning a decision is looming on what to try next - with all the fresh side effects that that entails. The spiral can't be stopped. In fact it seems to be gaining speed, the effects multiplying. I feel like I have to keep saying yes, submitting to more and more. I used to head straight for a bar after my Sloan sessions when they had been in the evening. But now that I work a later shift, my Sloan appointments are in the morning. So I head for a decadent, toothache-inducing cinnamon bun. I'm sure the calorie count is astronomical which, is why I forbade myself to eat them for years. But I discovered them one rebellious and downhearted morning in a cart outside of Sloan Kettering, and they have been my Sloan antidote ever since.
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My wife and I are going in different directions. Each week or month she is stronger and reaches another milestone while recovery from a near catastrophic car accident. Recently, she stopped using her cane.
Each week or month, I get a bit more worn down by my meds, walking slower, slower to get up, more frailties emerge. I’ve noticed that her cane is adjustable. At some point, we will be switching roles. Instead of me taking care of her, she will be keeping an eye on me. But right now we are at a good equilibrium. For a while I took her hand when we walked to steady her. Now we just like to hold hands. Tonight we had the house to ourselves. We watched TV in the basement and then played ping pong while listening to Bonnie Rait on the turntable. (Yes, a turntable.) Then we danced. Ms. Rait put out a wonderful rythmn as I twirled her and made her smile. We swayed around the basement, my arms easily wrapped around her slim body - even slimmer in the wake of the crash. She's all light and air. Pulling her towards me was like tugging on the line of a kite dipping in the breeze. I led, but I can't say she followed. She has never followed me in anything. She just knew what I was trying to do and made it work. It was one of those sublime moments that sticks in your head like a delightful tune. John was propped up in his hospital bed and smiling when I walked into his room. He lifted the bandaged stump of his right leg for a little waggle hello.
It was a first good - well, not step - gesture. It didn't happen easily. There were bureaucratic snafus and aggravation every hobble along the way for the amputation of John's right foot. It took nine hours to admit him, surgery was delayed a day, the hospital had an outdated list of meds for him, and the morning of surgery stretched into the night before he went in to have his right foot amputated. What an agony to endure, waiting to have a part of your body cut off and told to wait some more. And a decision like this automatically comes with hesitation, and the temptation to back out. The immediate aftermath was another level of agony because it took two hours for the hospital to approve pain killers. "I was screaming," John tells me. "And they told me I was disturbing the other patients. But I couldn't take the pain." The pain was under control when I arrived a few days after. Surprisingly there was no grogginess or falling asleep under the weight of drugs. Instead, he was alert, playful, and talkative. He held court as friends drifted in to check on him. His cheerfulness and optimism was remarkable, and he made his visitors feel good. There was no sympathy or pity to mar what John had made a triumphant moment. Some good advice had helped him, John said. His dear friend had advised John before the surgery to put all of his worry, his years of frustrations, all of the negativity, to put it in that foot. And then cut it off. It seemed to be working. I, like others who saw him, complemented John on his remarkably buoyant attitude. But later, John sent me a note. "I'm trying to be brave," he wrote. "But inside I'm a bunch of emotions." Watching him be brave is a lesson for me to remember months from now. "Death smiles at us all, but all a man can do is smile back."
Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote that. But I know it because Russell Crowe said it in the movie "Gladiator." I've also heard the expression that death is a big beautiful thing. I've been trying to get my head around that one. I can see it is something to be respected, and is an enormous experience that can't be repeated. I suspect there is a truth in that comment, but haven't seen it yet as all that beautiful. But I do have a sense about the smiling part. Knowing my likely time frame has taken away ambition, job angst, competitiveness. That's a lot of daily agita gone right there. It’s nice not caring what the bosses think. In a crass way I can also think that my personal job is done and done well. The mortgage is paid off, college tuition done, and the insurance policy will leave my family comfortable. Most of this was engineered by Barbara, but I did my part. I’m not leaving a mess behind. And there are darker days when I am tired of the pain and the constantly multiplying side effects, which can be humiliating and isolating. There are days I wouldn't mind not waking up. An end to that, at times, sounds like relief. I'm not good at delving into feelings or philosophy, but I know that the other night I had a sort of epiphany. I was walking home from work and my daughter had walked partway to meet me. As we chatted, somehow my situation came up and I told her that I was fine with it. Maybe it was because the night was pleasant despite it being December, or that she had come meet me and we were walking arm in arm. But it came almost as a surprise realization to me when I told her, "I am happy." I even smiled. "You did fine," my son told me.
"Thanks," I said, wiping my eyes. I had just apologized for crying while telling him and my daughter about my prognosis. It's the hormone treatments, I said. I had practiced telling them out loud so this wouldn't happen, but the tears came right away. "I would probably cry if you told me you got an A on a term paper," I told Paul, a college senior.. "I didn't," he said. "Well, I might cry about that, too," I said. This was all said through tears. So I was surprised and grateful when he told me I did fine. I could only sneak a peek at my daughter. My first born is a crier too, and seeing her tears I feared would unleash a flood of my own. Her eyes had welled up, but she was doing better than me. When I was done, we were all quiet for a bit. Then Maura hugged me and said she was going for a walk. "Want me to come?" I asked. "No, thanks, Dad. I just want to take a walk." I felt better. I had been dreading telling them, spreading this shadow over their lives. But they are okay. And now my only real dread is gone. "Sheer joy," the text message began.
It was from my wife. More than three months after being struck by an SUV she had arduously clawed her way back to being able to walk our cute but muddle-headed dog to the park, circle the rather large park and home again. Then she texted me her “sheer joy” exuberance. This woman, who was as close to death as you can get and still be with us, was thrilled by being able to walk through this world on her own power, at her own whim. Sheer joy, indeed, I thought as I walked home from the train that night. We forget about what a delight it is to be able to move about as we please. I was walking slower than I used to. In fact, I don’t get out of second gear any more. But I was walking through a park in the night with stars and a nearly full moon above. Sheer joy. But another truth was that every step was a stab of pain with an occasional electric jolt as the right knee joint slipped. My wife's walking was getting better, she had pulled back from the edge of the grave and was getting stronger. I was heading in a different direction. While I still enjoyed my walks, my distances kept shrinking and my gait more lumbering. Which made me realize that the occasional ride home from the train station can be sheer joy, too. John filled the large black rolling desk chair. Wearing a black shirt and black shorts, he seemed as one with the chair as he maneuvered through his cramped room without standing up.
He pulled himself along with his left foot, covered in a white sock. His right foot, however, was elephantine, and the enormous foot slid around the floor, covered in a large bandage. John, a 300 hundred pound diabetic, was waiting for his appointment later in the month to have the foot amputated. Actually, it would be more than the foot. Doctors weren't sure whether it would be below or above the knee. My friend has been in virtual solitary confinement, not having left his room for months. The last time he went to a doctor's appointment, he fell down the three or four steps in the front of his apartment house as he tried to negotiate them on his distorted foot. That foot, and what was going to happen to it, was a spectre that John lived with. And he did it in a very small space. There was a bed, a large screen computer, and a small couch that was covered with stuff. That took up most of the room. John and his rolling chair had a runway maybe seven yards long and little more than a yard wide. And there was a cat dish and litter box for Soul Man. There was only one window and that was covered by blinds which John wouldn't open, even on this gloriously sunny autumn day. At times, he admitted he couldn’t tell whether it's early morning or the evening. This is where he waits to have a significant part of his body cut away. What a spectre to have to confront all alone. Friends have come through with legal and financial help, but other than the daily phone call from his mother, John's primary contact with people is the government bureaucracy as he fends off eviction, deals with Medicaid, arranges visit by medical and psychological helpers. Maybe that is why we talked for five hours. Mostly he talked. About his freelance editing, the state of journalism, his foot, his laundry, the loneliness, the anger at himself for lifestyle decisions have brought him to this. He has a large face like a bulldog. It's one I like to watch when he talks because it's so expressive. When he told me that he's been weepy at times, I said that I was marveling at him. When my wife got hit by a car, she was surrounded almost immediately and around the clock by family and friends. And I am with my family every day. I said I thought he was some kind of superman to be able to handle this alone. On my way to John's that day, I passed a man on the sidewalk on crutches and wearing a black knee brace. Having once worn one, I asked if the problem was a torn ACL. As soon as he began speaking I realized that he was homeless or on the cusp. He was answering me by saying, more to himself than to me, that he had broken his knee. "Hurts like hell," he said in a voice that carried hints of anger, frustration and hopelessness. "But everything in life hurts." Here was another person handling a tormented life alone. I remembered him when I left John's apartment and passed the spot where I had walked a little faster to not have to listen to this semi-crazy’s scary philosophy: “Everything in life hurts.” But then I thought of John, powering through his bleak crisis, looking forward to something of an ending nine months from now when he expects to be fitted with a permanent prosthesis. And will be able to walk out of his apartment -- his chrysalis -- again without tumbling down the steps. I swung the ax in a slow circle, backwards until it rose over my head, then it accelerated as I put my back into its descent. The log split down the middle, the wood making a quick ripping noise as the two pieces flew in different directions.
"I can still split wood," I thought to myself with satisfaction. I may be 66 and so achy in the morning that bending to lift the toilet seat is done gingerly, but by the afternoon my body loosens up. That strike when the wood finally gives way is a good, clean feeling. It's the same as when you hit a baseball with a bat, hit it just right so it's a line drive or a homer. If the ball is popped up or fouled off, the bat can sting. But the sweet spot doesn't sting at all. It feels good through your hands, arms, back and legs. I once used that sensation of hitting a ball just right in a job interview to describe how a good edit felt. Fixing a cumbersome story, fashioning a compelling lede, paring away the excess words that got in the way of the story, and having the reporter recognize that the story was now better. It felt like hitting a line drive. But I don't think the guy I was talking to had ever been a baseball player. I got the job anyway. It's the same with splitting wood. Hit the log wrong or have it not break open sends reverberations through the body. It even jars the mind. But the swing with an all-out commitment of arms and back, the swing that succeeds, feels like victory. I stood in one of the lanes just a few yards from the finish line for the New York City Marathon.
It was the day before the race and I was walking to work from my latest appointment at Sloan Kettering. It was a sunny autumn morning and the park was filled with joggers warming up for the next day’s event. Bits of French, Spanish and languages I couldn’t understand bobbed past me. Facing that finish line, the bleachers empty, the timing clock overhead, I tried to imagine what runners from all over the world would feel as they threw up their in arms in victory for being able to finish their private race. That imaginary moment of cheers was interrupted by a herd of joggers rumbling by, all wearing hot pink T-shirts with "FRANCE" emblazoned across the front. I moved out of the lane continued on to work. The days of me running a marathon, or even running across the street, were long gone. And I have a marathon of my own to complete. If I finish it gracefully, in my mind I can throw up my arms in triumph. I dropped a twenty dollar bill in the bucket of a trumpet player today. I pass him every morning that I go to Sloan Kettering. I start listening for him as the doors of the subway shuttle open at the Grand Central end. Hundreds of rush hour people charge out of the train like an attacking platoon and somehow avoid colliding with the hundreds hurrying towards the train hoping to get on before the doors close. And serenading these crazed commuters is this slim guy, his feet planted, playing lovely music on his trumpet. He made me smile one morning when I heard him playing what I was pretty certain was "Flight of the Bumblebee," a frenetic tune that seemed to match the moment. I'd always been too intent on catching the uptown No. 6 train to stop and give him a buck. Until today. I figured I owed him for all those mornings he brightened a route that has a destination of pressure cuffs, CT scans, needles, bone scans, MRIs, injections and bad news. So I took his photo and dropped a portrait of Andrew Jackson in his bucket. The subways are filled with the sound of music. On days I don't go to MSK, there is the old crooner, Sammie C. Davis the Melody Man, near the Eighth Avenue exit of Penn Station. I give him credit as the oldest busker I've seen. He puts on a charming show, and always with a different hat. A string quartet used be around the corner from Sammie, but construction jackhammers remodeling a corner of the station have driven them away. During the evening rush, Sammie's spot next to the newspaper/gum/candy stand is taken by musicians playing everything from zithers to xylophones to steel drums. Occasionally a trio of opera singers take turns with full throated arias. Some acts put more emphasis on the weirdness than the music. A woman plays violin while standing on a box and working a hoola hoop some Friday evenings at the Columbus Circle station where I start my trip home. Then there’s the paint-splattered lady. Every bit of her clothing, including her baseball style hat and her shoes and her bag are covered with a million brightly colored pinhead sized dots. She keeps herself secluded in alcoves of sprawling Penn Station, lurking for days at a time, and then is gone for weeks. I've never seen her panhandle or talk to herself, but I still figured she was another crazy denizen of the city's train system who could somehow afford a lot of paint. Until I came upon her one evening. She was singing, beautifully singing Gospel songs. It was a remarkably powerful, clear and emotional voice, one that sounded to me like it had been professionally trained. A day or so later, I saw the paint-splatter lady approach Sammie C. Davis as he was crooning to the morning crowd, and drop a dollar in his bucket. If she could afford to pay for the music, then I was arrears. And the trumpet player benefited. |