June 17th
My long time friend Jacques is back from the art show
he exhibited in at Cincinnati, so we decide to work
on the sailboat. Oh, she's a noble craft. Built in
1976, she's been dry-docked for a few years so
there's plenty to do. We've already spent an
afternoon vaccuuming, cleaning, scrubbing and
polishing. Now we'll start putting in some of the
hardware and woodwork that's been removed by the
previous owner who died before he could put it back
on.
Jacques is pumped about the boat. He's so excited
that his mind is
like a circus monkey jumping from one trapeze to
another. At least that's how it seems to me. He's
got a running commentary going. A verbal stream of
consciousness that's flooding my thought process. I
decide to ride the wave of his comments. Seems like
we are trying to fix everything at once, getting no
single aspect completed. My head is starting to feel
numb or is that an incipient headache. Then the
phone rings. My seven year old daughter Bryncalls to me
that the call is for me.
I can use the break, so I leave the yard where the
boat is and head inside to take the call.
It's my doctor on the phone. He calls me "Mister
T________" and an alarm goes off in my mind. He's
never called me by my last name before. There
is something abnormal about my blood. Well, sure I
know that because the lab person has already called
about the lack of red cells and her concerns about
the iron in my diet. But somehow, he's not
telegraphing anemia. He says he thinks it might be
something serious and he wants me to go to a
specialist. Of course I respond positively. Says
there are two good ones in town and who would I like
to go to, Dr. Miller or Dr. Thai. I say whoever is
available first. He mentions for the first time the
possiblity of this abnormal blood condition being an
indicator of leukemia. LEUKEMIA! I've known two
people who've had leukemia, two friends, and they are
both dead. The doctor says he'll set up an
appointment for me if I like. I say, "Please do."
"For when?", he asks. "As soon as possible." "I'll
call you back when I get the appointment for
you."
This hits me like a ton of bricks. Conveniently,
there is a couch in the room where the phone is so I
lay down to collect my thoughts. Collect my
thoughts? That's a joke, my
mind is racing somewhere on a track between disbelief
and fear. But somehow, intuitively, I've known there
was something wrong, at least a dis-ease, at worst
something terminal.
I call out the open window to Jacques that I'm going
to stay in for a while. "Are you okay?", he knows me
too well. "No, I'm not."
I've got my first decision to make. Who do I tell
about my condition? Everyone? Certainly not my
seven year-old, not yet. That will take some time.
She's a beautiful child, sensitive, intelligent but
naive. I want to protect her from the fear that an
inappropriate revelation about my new condition might
bring. How would I have felt as a seven year-old if
I found out my dad might die?
Jacques though is one of my very best friends, and
he's here now and I don't want to work on the boat
anymore. I'm suffering a double whammy.
My head hurts and I've received some very bad news.
I figure logically I'm in some kind of shock. I
resolve to tell him. I go out and tell him. I can
see by the way he averts his eves from my gaze that
he's having trouble receiving the news. We both knew
Michael, who died from a long bout with Leukemia. I
begin to feel for him. But he's an eternal
optimist and reacts accordingly. "Hey, you are going
to be OK. It may be something else. Don't get upset
now, wait till you see the doctor." His
recommendations are sound. I tell him that I am
going to see a specialist soon. I also tell him I
don't want to work on the boat anymore, so we pack
everything up and throw a big blue tarp over our
twenty-two footer.
Not long after Jacques hits the road, the phone
rings. My doctor's receptionist. The appointment is
for the next day at 10:30 with Dr. Thai. "Good," I
think to myself, "I've got to know what's going on.
I've got a doctor. I'm going to have to deal with
this. I'm going to have to face it full front."
When I get the chance, I tell my wife. She reacts
well. Almost too well. I begin immediately to think
she doesn't believe me somehow or refuses to.
Denial. I reflect on the various stages of dealing
with the death of a loved one or yourself. Stage one
is denial isn't it?
I mentally forgive her for not accepting. She seems
to be taking Jacques' point of view. It's probably
something else causing the abnormal blood levels.
Later she reminds me that I had a tick lodged on my
scalp some time back. She reminds me that a close
friend of ours was misdiagnosed with Hepatitis, when
it was really Erlichiosis, a tick-borne disease.
This line of thought actually gives me some hope.
On the Internet I find that tick diseases are
treatable with antibiotics. That seems alot better
than the alternative of treatment for Leukemia. I
have vague notions of chemotherapy, bone marrow
transplants, experimental drugs.
I stay up rather late that night researching on the
Web. I'm learning about Leukemia. I find a good
site about Leukemia
Tomorrow will tell. My appointment with Dr. Thai at
10:30 should clear up alot of the questions. Just
what do they think is wrong with me? Am
I going to die? If so, how soon? Or, am I curable?
And how can that be accomplished? These are
certainly unsettling questions, so it's not
surprising that I don't sleep too well.
June 18th
