*****
The CAT scan whirred around my head, sounding like the engine of an alien space ship as I felt myself move through the machine at a glacial pace. I kept my eyes closed, afraid I might look into the light as I had been instructed not to. I was pretty sure I didn’t want to be looking into any lights any time soon, thank you very much.
My skin was buzzing with nervous energy, but I did my best to hold still, even as the pain of not shaking spread through all my limbs. The picture they were taking of my brain would determine the course, quite literally, of the rest of my life. I don’t think I had ever been more nervous. The chill of the metal table I was laying on seeped into my back through the thin material of my hospital gown, and I hoped this would be over soon.
Finally, I heard, “Okay, Mr. Dempsey, you can get up now” over the intercom. I got up slowly, careful not to strain my weak muscles. I did not want orderlies to have to pick me up off the ground because I hadn’t taken it easy enough.
The overly cheerful technician came over to grab my arm and help me back into the prep room. She chattered away and I mostly ignored her until she sat me back down, in a chair this time, and handed me a sheet of paper.
“Normally, you wouldn’t get in to see a Doctor about your scan for a day or two, but Dr. Tillman had a cancellation this afternoon. If you can stick around an hour or so, he can go over your results with you.”
I felt a huge wave of relief flow through me. I would know today. I nodded dumbly at her and took the paper with directions to Dr. Tillman’s office within the hospital complex from where I was.
I went to the hospital cafeteria and pushed mushy peas and grilled chicken around my plate until it was time to meet with Dr. Tillman. It felt weird to see him at the hospital dressed in his scrubs. Normally, I met with him at his office where he dressed business casual with a lab coat.
I walked into his consultation room and saw him putting an x-ray film up on the viewing board. The walls were awash in the weird blue glow of the light shining through the x-ray films. The film had a dozen or so pictures of what I assumed to be my brain on it, and it just looked like a brain to me. I tried not to get my hopes up because I have no idea what a brain should look like. The last time we had looked at films together was when I got my diagnosis, and that whole day was kind of a blur in my mind.
I’ve got to give Dr. Tillman credit. He’s got a poker face like no one I have ever met. It must come in handy in his profession, to keep people from panicking upon entering the room.
After polite greetings, he led me over to the viewing board. He looked serious as he started to speak again.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Dempsey. It looks like the chemo hasn’t reduced the tumor as we had hoped.” He was pointing to a spot on the x-ray that was darker than the rest, but I couldn’t tell the difference between that spot and all the other spots. It took a moment for what he had said to sink in, and I felt my world starting to crumble inside me. It was like that first crack in a wall that just keeps growing and splitting until the whole wall is a pile of rubble.
I took a deep, steadying breath. I didn’t have anyone else here with me. I needed to pay attention. I mentally threw a concrete wall up in front of my crumbling emotions and cut myself off from them. Dr. Tillman was still talking.
“Wait. Stop. Dr. Tillman, can you start over? I spaced out for a few minutes after that first sentence.” He looked at me with understanding in his eyes as he told me again about how the chances of success with chemo were now down to a mere 10% and surgery was my best bet (still only 30% success rate). Success rate. What a euphemism for survival rate. It would need to be soon, because the tumor was still growing, despite the chemo (it was 5% bigger than the last time we had taken its picture).
He led me into his office, which was off the side of the consultation room and I sat down in a hard chair, facing his desk. He started talking again.
“Mr. Tillman, I know that the last time we spoke you had no one you wanted to give medical power of attorney to, but with this surgery upcoming, I urge you pick someone. It can be very stressful not knowing your decisions will be made by someone you trust.”
I gave a start. I had not even thought about that. I had taken my mother off all my forms after the last time we spoke, but I hadn’t had anyone else who I could put on instead. But now I did.
“Yeah. I can put a friend of mine on them.” I didn’t want to call Andrew my boyfriend again yet. And I wasn’t sure how Dr. Tillman felt about gay people. Just my luck he would be a homophobe and I would feel even worse about having him perform brain surgery on me.
After I filled out an Advance Directive and a Medical Power of Attorney form with Andrew’s name, I took my packet full of pre-surgery instructions and left his office. I needed to go somewhere to think. Somewhere without a million steps to get to the top.
I flagged a taxi outside the hospital. It is probably one of the only places in Austin you can actually get a cab. I told the driver to take me to Mansfield Dam. I hadn’t been there in almost a decade, but it was where I used to go to get away when I was college and trying to deal with coming out (to all but my family).
There was this pull off where I would go and sit and let the noise of the water crashing through the dam wash over my senses as I stared off into the rocks around the man-made lake. As the taxi drove over the dam and prepared to make the turn to where I remembered the pull off to be, I was surprised to find a park ranger hut. Apparently, they had built a park here sometime in the last ten years. I sighed, paid my ten dollars to get in and asked the taxi driver to wait in the parking lot.
Despite the rugged concrete and uneven rocky ground surrounding me, I took off my shoes to walk around the park and down to the water. As I took in the lake, I realized I had forgotten about the drought. There was no water running over the dam and the lake was drying up in places.
Nevertheless, I walked over the dried up rocks and grass where water used to be, savoring the sharp pricks of pain the gravel and pebbles shot through the bottoms of my feet. I welcomed a pain that had a concrete cause, a pain that I could identify and cure if I wanted. The sharpness of it overpowered the general pains and weaknesses of the rest of my illness ravaged body, and for a moment I could pretend I was well. I was well and had just walked over a sharp rock.
Eventually even that got to be too much, so I put my shoes back on and walked the rest of the way to the water. As I sat and stared at the glassy surface in almost complete silence, I was struck by the dry spots encroaching on the water from the center and edges of the reservoir. The sand and rocks, like a cancer invading the still waters.
Even now I am not sure what all I thought about, but I do know that I felt calmer when the taxi driver dropped me off back at my apartment. It was a crazily expensive cab fare but I couldn’t bring myself to care. I could be dead in 3 days anyway. What did I have to lose?
I sighed to myself. There was the gallows humor I was warned about during the one session with a counselor I went to when I was first diagnosed.
“Where have you been?” Andrew asked, without accusation, when I walked in the door. He did look a little worried though. He had argued that he should take the day off from work to take to me to my appointment, but I had overruled him and told him I would take a cab. I wouldn’t have been able to keep my walls up if I had gotten bad news in front of him. I would have collapsed right there in the doctor’s office.
“Can we talk for a minute?” A look of panic took over his face. Those are never good words. Even if this time they weren’t good for a different reason than usual.
He rallied quickly and responded, “Of course. How did your appointment go today?”
“That’s what I want to talk about. Can you just not respond ‘til I get through it all? Please.”
“Sure.” The panic deepened, but he didn’t interrupt me again until I was done with my telling.
Finally, I finished and sat down at the table. I pulled copies of the Advance
Directive and Medical Power of Attorney out of my bag and pushed them across the table to him. “These are for you. I hope you don’t mind. I named you.”
He stood up abruptly and pushed them back at me. “No!” he said, fear making his voice sound strained. “You can’t die.” He paused and then continued, “Do you want to die?” His voice rose in pitch and volume as he was saying this, until it was almost a scream.
The wall in me that had been holding strong all day, crumbled into million tiny pieces. I had needed him to be strong for me and he was falling apart. My voice matched his when I yelled back at him. “Of course I don’t want to die! Why would you think that?” With massive effort, I lowered my voice. “I just don’t want some stranger to make a decision for me if something goes wrong on Friday. I want someone who loves me to decide what is best.”
He sank back into himself a bit and stared at me, dumbstruck. This time, when I spoke, my voice was barely above a whisper. “Andrew, I am so fucking scared, and I’ve got nothing holding me together here. I don’t want to die. But I could. I’ve got a 70% chance of dying in three days. That’s a passing grade. Death has a fucking 70% chance of passing this test.” By this time I was not even sure what I was rambling on about. It was fear made manifest in my speech, and the words didn’t matter much anymore.
Andrew took two great strides across the room and wrapped his arms around me. “Shhh. Stop. I’ve got you. It’ll be okay. I’ve got you. Oh God, I just got you back. I don’t want to lose you again.” Still hugging me and speaking calming words in my ear, he walked me over to the couch, where he gathered me into his lap (which would never had worked before I lost 30 lbs and became a walking waif) and rocked me back and forth like I was a baby. I cried. I swear I’ve cried more in the past six months than in my entire life before that. I guess I had good reason but this cry seemed different. It was a cleansing cry. These tears washed out the fear and created a clean place for hope to rest in.
After a while, we stumbled back into the bedroom and fell asleep the same way we had the night before, together and loved.
*****
Life in Chaos Page 3