“Stay strong, brother.”
I smiled weakly. Certainly, he deserved acknowledgment. He was reaching out, trying to be
encouraging, supportive, and friendly, but I was late.
I was late because I had driven to
the wrong site for my Reclast infusion.
I drove to Hartford Hospital through treacherous morning traffic, pissed
I was late due my own ineptitude. I wasn’t going to cope with employee parking,
either. Every orthopedist thinks
he or she is Dale Earnhardt.
So, I drive up to the Valet parking.
A young kid (these days, anyone under
32) runs to my car.
I’m here for my treatment at the
cancer center, ” I say. “May I park here?”
He gives me a sad look. "Sorry, its no longer free…”
he trails off, not finishing the rest of the sentence, "... For you cancer
warriors." I did actually think parking was free.
“Fine,” I say, “Thanks.”
I jump out, and head for the Helen Gray Cancer Center
Stay strong, brother” He calls
after me.
“Stay strong brother” the statement
carries dread and peculiar emotional weight.
I’m pretty sure, “stay strong brother” Is not the response
when a patient pulls up and says:
“ I’m here for the AA meeting,
where can I park?”
“Where is Diabetic training?”
Or even (and this is weird)
“Where do I park, I have an
appointment at the Chronic
Heart Failure Infusion suite?”
Why do I get a free ride?
More to the point, why don’t I stop
and say, “Oh no, you
misunderstand, I had cancer, Now I’m
in remission, and prednisone has caused osteoporosis, so I need a Reclast
infusion.”
That’s why I am here. In my mind, Cancer is a
tragic but non-lethal disease that leaves its victims sadder but much
wiser. Fighting cancer apparently
was the only way I could have gotten a New York Times Op Ed piece. I would not have been published if my piece began,
“
I have ambivalent feelings about my job.”
I would not have been published without
help from friend Judith, but that’s another blog.
Cancer is less lethal than end
stage chronic heart failure,
“
I spend one hour a week receiving infusions that permit me to live a few years
more, because circumstance beyond my control has denied me the chance at a
heart transplant and survival.”
Oh
wait… Judith, you reading this?
In
my 30 years in medicine, the death rate among those receiving infusions for CHF
is still 100%, while the survival rate for chemo
insensitive CLL has gone from 0%
to… well, much more.
Cancer may be a serious disease, but curable ( ptoo ptoo) in 100% of the bodies in
which I have inhabited.
Prednisone,
on the other hand, is a tablet of pure misery, Satan’s own Pharmaceutical. Prednisone has ravaged my
body , turning my skin to paper and my
lenses to opaque, cataract -clouded stones. Prednisone has dissolved my bones
giving me a T score of -2.7 ( look it up, on a roll)
Since
my hip bones will transform into chalk within 5 years, I receive Reclast, a bi phosphanate. It binds to the bones, and makes difficult
for our osteoclasts (cells that remodel our skeletons ) to destroy our lovely
bones.
There is a wonderful aside here
about how plumbers discovered that
bi phosphanates unclog soap- clogged (read calcium- containing compounds) pipes. That’s for
another time.
Cancer
has become a lovely, benign tool for me.
This reminds me of Curb your
Enthusiasm when Larry David
discovers that saying, “ I can’t
come because my father just died” is such an effective dodge that he uses it
well after Shiva is over.
When
must someone stop play the cancer card? When Chemo is over? That’s true at the Farber, where suddenly
parking is no longer free.
Must
one return to the banal world of the cancer-deficient after one has a statistically good
chance of long-term survival? For me, that was ( ptoo ptoo) over 2 years ago.
Or,
is cancer like the military, 20 years after the battle is over, one can still
get a Free sundae at Friendly’s on veterans and I presume, cancer survivor day?
I’m cranky these days from a withering
combination of my medications, the effects of prednisone and the overall
irreversible bodily mayhem that
occurs even years after treatment.
I
have the lungs of an 80 year old, and, believe me, after a day of seeing a
mandated 2.2 patients an hour, those 80 year old lungs are fighting for
survival.
Is
it fair for me to say, “I just can’t see another patient, Olga, it’s...”
“I
know, Doctor Weinreb. Stay strong.”
