This is the third of Penny’s Cancerland essays, originally written in 2016 and 2017, after her cancer diagnosis in February, 2016.
With layovers, the transit time from our last stop in Cambodia back to campus must have been close to 30 hours. When you travel through 12 time zones, it’s best to give up keeping track of time. Just be sure to be at the next gate or departure point when needed and then attempt to eat and sleep at the “right” times wherever you end up. Alternately you can adopt the philosophy of a couple of our male students: eat whatever you can, whenever you can and, especially if you can get someone else to pay for it.
After a month of adventure and learning, the tired, smelly lot of us arrived back on campus on a Saturday and most of us (or at least the professors) managed to show up for classes on Monday morning. Bam! We all catapulted into spring semester.
Still plagued by the symptoms of parasites, I called my doctor and started down the path of referrals and tests. When you call medical offices and sound calm and collected, you get put on the non-urgent lists everywhere. Next time I’m going to sound agitated, panicky, and desperate. I can sound angry when I need to, as if on the verge of psychosis. Proof: I’ve won awards doing dramatic readings of Sylvia Plath poems. But I’m not very good at “sassy and stubborn”; it took no time for the director back in college to dismiss the idea of me playing Kate in Taming of the Shrew. Maybe I should consult with some of my friends from the east coast. They know how to exude that “Don’t you mess with me, Bucko!” attitude. They are also more practiced and agile with, shall we call it, “colorful” language.
All the tests and consults served as the forms and interviews for immigration to Cancerland, a move no one wants to take but you do the paperwork anyway. Even though I had relatives who had dealt with cancer, I had never really dwelled in the land of cancer with them. At most, I popped over the border for a short visit and then took the high-speed train back to my reality.
The delay in diagnosis did have a silver lining of sorts. On the first weekend back, Rand and I flew to New York City to hear our daughter perform at Carnegie Hall. By then I had lost most of my appetite and was feeling so bloated, I wondered if I might burst when the plane went above 20,000 feet.
It’s amazing what discomfort you can ignore when enjoying NYC with your husband and daughter: stopping in Grand Central Station, strolling past ice skaters in Central Park, taking in a show off Broadway, ferrying across the canal to the Statue of Liberty, and, of course, we proud parents got to watch the conductor shake our daughter’s hand on stage at Carnegie. Carnegie! If I hadn’t been so bloated, I would have worn a classy dress and borrowed my mother’s pearls.
The second weekend in February, Rand and I did our most impressive of many trips to see our daughter – trips we dub “commando runs.” We left Sunday morning and drove the 10 hours through Chicago to St Olaf College in time to attend my daughter’s junior recital. This included organizing and hosting the post-recital reception. After clean-up, we turned around and drove half way back, finding a hotel somewhere I don’t remember, and then completing the trip Monday morning in time for Rand to teach his courses.
I spent most of that trip reclined as far as the car seat allowed and by Tuesday I was sent to the ER. Much of the next week remains a blur in my memory. I don’t remember wondering if I might die or how long I might have to live. I had no strange dreams or premonitions. I didn’t notice Death or anyone else of interest lurking in the corners. All I could manage was answering the question about my pain number over and over again. “What number would you give your pain?” If I had had the energy I would have punched the smiley faces poster the nurse was pointing to. The nurses always define “10” as “the worst pain you can imagine.” I have a very good imagination and am pretty sure that having a limb blown off or being thrown into a raging fire would qualify as “10.” So, I gave numbers like 3 and 4 and once in a while 5.
Such modest pain numbers seem to put me on the back burner, bumped down in the surgery order by patients who probably needed more immediate care, or maybe just grimaced and complained a lot more, and who gave pain numbers like 9 or 10.
I do remember one more thing that I managed to do as I waited around for my turn in the operating room. I remember our pastor stopped by. I didn’t have the energy to open my eyes and look at him, but I do distinctly remember telling him that I didn’t think I could accept the nomination to be a church elder just then.
I remember a few things from diagnosis week that didn’t make it into this essay.
I remember suggesting that we get a cab back to our hotel one evening in New York, but Penny insisted on walking, and did her best to enjoy the walk, despite clearly not feeling well.
I remember Penny sitting on a chair after the recital at St Olaf, observing the reception, but feeling too lousy to really participate in it.
I remember crossing the border from Minnesota into Wisconsin and deciding I should try to find a hotel since I was getting tired, and Penny wasn’t going to be able to help keep me awake.
I remember Penny trying to sleep as much as she could on the drive home the next day.
I remember calling her doctor’s office as we drove to find out if we should finish the trip home or stop at a hospital along the way. It was late afternoon or early evening when we arrived home, and since the doctor had not urged us to get to a hospital immediately (see the discussion of pain numbers above), we decided to wait until the next morning to get a decent night’s sleep and to see if things would improve – as they had several times before, both in Cambodia and since her return.
I remember teaching my 8 am statistics class the next morning while Penny got ready for me to take her to the urgent care center immediately after class. It was pretty quickly determined that things were beyond urgent care, so we were sent to the ER. It was our first of many trips to the ER over the next 8.5 years. Eventually we had our ER routine down, but we were still novices at this point.
We spent the rest of a long, miserable day in the ER, mostly waiting between conversations with different doctors who were trying to figure out what could be the matter. I remember emailing to clear our schedules for the afternoon – an amazingly optimistic time frame, as it turned out. A CT scan showed a blockage in the large intestine, which explained the bloating, pain, and visibly expanding abdomen. A colonoscopy was scheduled for the next morning.
I remember Penny noting that because of her blockage, at least she wouldn’t have to undergo the usual prep for the colonoscopy. There was always something to be thankful for.
I remember receiving the cancer diagnosis before Penny had returned from her colonoscopy, and waiting to share the news with Penny once the sedation had warn off a bit.
I remember the phone calls to our kids, and to our niece, who was living with us at the time, to give them the news.
I remember returning to the hospital room after the colonoscopy. The nurses were already bustling to get us ready for the ambulance that was waiting to take Penny to a different hospital for emergency surgery. And I remember the surgery being pushed back from mid-afternoon to early evening because the surgeon was needed for an even more dire emergency.
I remember the phrases “aytpical presentation” and “you’re so young.” The diagnosis seemed to surprise most of the medical people.
And I remember thinking that there would be surgery, and recovery, and possibly some chemotherapy, and then this phase would be over, and things would return to normal.
Oh, and I remember my own trip to the ER last October. I had fallen two days earlier while helping someone carry a kayak down a slippery bank. Things hadn’t improved over the weekend, and by Monday I could barely move. As I gingerly shuffled up to the counter, I was asked for my pain number. I decided to take a different approach. “One notch below kidney stones,” I said. “Have you had kidney stones?” “Yes.” “Then I’ll put you down for a 9.” I didn’t tell them that I too have an imagination for several levels of worse pain. I let them enter “9” in my chart.
That did indeed seem to move things along a bit more briskly. I was pretty quickly situated in one of the emergency room bays I had been in before with Penny. And not long after I was settled and had an IV running, someone was there to bring me for a CT scan. I suspect they were worried about potential internal injuries, but all I had was 12 fractures of 9 ribs, a few of which were “moderately displaced.” A mere flesh would compared to all the things Penny had endured.