I wasn’t satisfied with my last post. This is a rewrite.
Kate and Bill strolled through the liquor store trying to find just the right bottle of wine for the oncologist. They looked at the Italians, Chileans, French, and even expensive California wines locked in a temperature-controlled security locker.
“I’ll pay $100 dollars for a bottle,” Bill said. “After all the guy did save my life, but I’m not paying $100 for domestic wine.”
After about a half an hour they settled on a high quality blended French wine.
“This appointment is a big deal,” Kate said. “It might be the biggest day of our lives. It signals the beginning of a new chapter. What do you think is going to happen?”
“I don’t know punky, I got a bad vibe though. I think they’ll find something – something easy to fix, but …”
“I was thinking they might find something too, but I didn’t want to say anything.”
“What the hell do we know,” Bill said. “If you look at how rigorous this chemo’s been, I don’t see how anything can survive that.”
“You do look pretty good,” she said.
“Good?”
“Okay you look great.”
“I even have hair growing back in my nose and ears. I’m damn handsome,” he said. “Listen Punky, we’ll be fine. Let’s got to bed. Tomorrow’s a big day.”
Bill and Kate slept remarkably well that night, buoyed by the knowledge he had undergone more than 600 hours of chemotherapy, and previous scans had come back negative.
At about 0500 Bill woke to eight canine eyes boring holes into him.
“Jeepers. Okay, okay, I’ll feed you,” he says to the menagerie of mutts Buzz, Harry, Pearl, and Coco.
The four dogs developed an early morning routine since Bill had been home sick for more than six months. Sometimes he couldn’t sleep, sometimes he needed some cereal, and other times he just wanted a cup of coffee in the quiet house to collect his thoughts and write his blog.
As the dogs snort, crunch, and slurp the hard kibble, Bill sips a hot cup of coffee and drifts into his own thoughts.
Okay if everything is good then I’ll go back to work on January 3rd and work half days for two weeks and then begin my fulltime schedule the third week of January. I should probably write up my plan so the doc has something to go by. Man this cough is killing me. I’ve been sneezing and hacking for almost two months. If I didn’t know better I’d say my platelets are low and this is causing my runny nose, which is causing my post-nasal drip, and that is causing me to cough. It’s been almost 28 days since I got out of the hospital so that can’t be it; my numbers should have rebounded by now. Jesus, give me hand, will ya. I just want this to be over. I’ve been through so much and I’m tired of it all. Sometimes I get tired of being positive, and stoically suffering fighting this shit – I really want to scream, but to who and say what?
At about 0615 Kate’s oversized alarm clock goes off. It’s louder than a civil defense alert siren and the dogs go crazy tumbling over each other in the hallway to be first when the bedroom door opens and Kate gets a visit and a lick from each one.
“Billy! Are you okay,” she shouts.
“I’m fine.”
“It’s going to be okay,” she says.
“I know.”
Bill gets up from the kitchen table, walks to the bedroom, and softly strokes the side of her cheek as she lies there in the pack of love the puppies are providing.
“Do you want a cup of coffee?”
“No I’ll get it myself,” she says.
“Okay here’s the plan,” Bill says. “I’ll take Coco to the vet for her 9:15 appointment, come home, pick up the wine and the toys for toy drive, and meet you at the doctor’s office at 11:20. After we get the good news we’ll go to the toy drive and get some cake. “
Fast Forward to 11 a.m.
Bill walks in the Oncology office and meets a nurse from the chemo suite.
“Where have you been?” she asks. “You look great.”
“I’m in recovery now,” he says. “Today I get the official read out of my cancer CT/PET scan to confirm I’m cancer free. “
“That’s great,” she says. “I’ll talk to you later.”
The receptionist crosses him off her list of appointments and tells him to get his blood work done and the doctor will be available shortly.
Bill goes to the phlebotomy room and they draw four tubes of blood. When he gets back to the waiting area, Kate is already there and they walk to the larger waiting area where a CNA will get them for the appointment.
Shortly is of course a relative term in doctor speak. The 11:20 appointment goes off sometime after noon.
“Mr. Potter,” the CNA summons. Kate and Bill follow her to the examination room where she takes his vital signs. His blood pressure is unusually high.
“I am pretty stressed,” Bill says accounting for his blood pressure.
“Let’s take it again,” the CNA says. “Okay this time it’s a little better.”
“Are my blood numbers in,” Bill asks
“Sure, have a look.”
“Wow. That’s not good,” he says.
“What’s wrong,” Kate asks.
“My platelets are at 54.”
“What should they be?”
“About 150 or better,” he says. “That explains the runny nose. Everything else is low too, but on the cusp of being normal. This is a real surprise.”
The CNA leaves and when she closes the door Kate and Bill see a chemo regimen written in red dry erase marker on a white board hidden behind the door when it’s open.
“Jesus, I hope that’s not for us,” he says.
“It can’t be,” Kate says.
The couple sit a little longer and the doctor comes in with Bill’s four-inch thick file.
“How have you been?” the doctor asks.
“I’m okay. My legs are still a little wobbly,” Bill says.
“Tell him about the cough,” Kate says. “He’s had a cough ever since he was in the hospital for the neutropenia and C-Diff.”
“She’s right,” Bill says. “I called the doctor and they said it is going around and I should take Mucinex and drink a lot of water.”
The doc says the original cancer Bill came in for is gone and in remission, but there is a small node on the lung that showed up on the CT scan.
“It’s so small we can’t even biopsy it,” the doctor says. “The thing now is to observe it.”
The doctor says it might be an irritation from all the coughing and has nothing to do with cancer, or it might be the early stage of something. At this point he reiterates emphatically that he cannot call it cancer. Moreover it just isn’t acting like a Burkitt’s lymphoma. The doctor prescribes some antibiotics for the cough and schedules another CT scan for three weeks.
Bill’s head is swimming. He wants to scream, laugh, and run away. Fuck is the only word that he seems capable of saying, so he keeps his mouth shut. The farewell gift of a bottle of wine now seems to be a welcome back memento.
Kate is equally stunned.
The unequivocal good news they were hoping for spontaneously evaporates in seconds. All they have left to hang onto is, “It might be nothing.” Even the good news that the original cancer is gone, is cold comfort as they look to another potential life threatening challenge.
"Nothing's ever easy," Bill mutters to himself.
"Nothing's ever easy," Bill mutters to himself.
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