I promised my mother I would call her after the doctor’s visit but I
couldn’t do it yet. I had to mull over what I was told. Every word the doctor
said would come back to me over the next twenty-four hours and I had to chew it
up and digest it before I could relate it to someone else. That was because no
matter what positive moments happened during the doctor’s visit, overall it
depressed me. I would give Dr Comfort a cheery goodbye as I walked out the
door, but by the time I got to my car I felt like I had transformed back to the
“before” picture. I spent the rest of the day struggling to maintain any level
of enthusiasm. A trip to the doctor’s always meant an afternoon on the computer
researching my disease but nothing had changed. There was no magic report I
could find to give me a better prognosis. I researched the new chromosome
abnormality. Some scientists said it was a bad mark against survival although
others felt the jury was still out. After I researched enough, I wallowed,
sometimes cried, definitely ate chocolate and would most likely curl up in a
ball and go to sleep. When I rang Alex to talk to him about the visit, he again
wanted to have a bottle of champagne to celebrate my immunoglobulin level and
generally upbeat doctor’s visit. But by the time he got home from work I was in
too bad of a mood to put it in the fridge.
“Then let’s have a bottle of
champagne to celebrate Charlotte’s good fortune.” (She got a work placement she
wanted from her university course).
He was smart and tricky, my
husband. I would be having a glass of champagne whether I wanted to or not.
On April 17th the phone rang. It was haematology from North
Shore hospital. They wanted me to come in for a bone marrow biopsy the next
day. This was to see if the plasma cells in my bone marrow had reduced. They
were at ninety per cent and needed to be less than twenty per cent to qualify
for a transplant. I preferred to be caught off guard like this rather than having
a definite appointment in a week’s time, there wasn’t so much time to get
nervous and in fact nerves didn’t set in until about half an hour before we
were due to leave the house. Charlotte was driving back to Wellington the same
day. I gave her a hug and although I would see her in two weeks, I fought back
the tears. Alex and I got to the hospital in plenty of time and we were not
kept waiting long. The Asian doctor who did my first biopsy would perform this
one. Every time I saw her in the past few months she looked cross. I thought
she didn’t like me because of my less than classy behaviour the first time we
met. It turned out she did not remember me.
“I was so upset at the first
bone marrow biopsy I had to have a general anaesthetic. Remember me now?”
“Oh, that was you?”
This time I was much more
relaxed. I was able to use the gas inhaler which allowed the drug to relieve my
pain and my worry. In fact I got so good at sucking in the calming drug every
time I looked over at Alex I got a fit of giggles. The nurse had to tell me to
slow down. She looked like she might try to take the gas away from me but I
held on tight. The doctor told me exactly what she was doing during the
procedure. I asked if people normally had an easy or hard time during the
biopsy. A nurse answered:
“Young men have a rough
time,” she said. Then she started relating more stories. “One woman screamed.
Another man refused all drugs whatsoever.”
“Really?” (inhale, inhale)
“Indians and Asians seem to
have a lower pain tolerance.”
“That’s interrrr essss
ting.” (inhale, inhale)
It was all over fairly
quickly. A big white bandage was put across my lower back and I was instructed
not to shower for twenty-four hours. I knew the familiar “kicked-in-the-back”
feeling would come later that night. But I had come a long way from the first
biopsy four months earlier. This time I didn’t leave feeling I was about to
die.
I didn’t have another
doctor’s appointment until September. By then the stem cell transplant would be
a distant memory and I might even have some of my own hair back. But it would
also be another moment of discovery. Would I still have cancer or not?
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