Did it change anything?
Well, we jointly acknowledged that in the absence of morphology tests, there was nothing we could do.
That’s not very helpful.
Maybe, but what else could I do? We’d finally gone on holiday together, and I was really putting a brave face on things. I didn’t want to spoil the trip for Dorota, and I needed a break myself.
As far as I can remember, I think that was when I started thinking that all these skin problems, the fever and diarrhoeas, were nothing but symptoms of some kind of tropical sickness. It didn’t sound like a death sentence but it did explain my general state of health. I analysed the previous months, too. I had been in Japan, Australia, Thailand—plenty of opportunity to contract something, and Thailand seemed most probable.
It was still in my mind also that—a year previously—my ex-girlfriend got sick after returning from Thailand. Strange patterns formed on her hands; it turned out that she had some kind of parasite, so I thought my case was maybe similar. And I stuck to this belief until I came back. I had a plan. I wanted to get examined at the Institute of Maritime and Tropical Medicine in Gdynia.
Immediately after landing?
No. I had my duties to attend to: I had two shows to play. The first one was with Smolik, where I was supposed to present a show as part of the Meskie Granie festival, which is sponsored by a Polish beer company. Later, we played at Castle Party with Behemoth. But I had a bed booked in hospital, because I knew that I would be spending at least a few days there. I felt much more at ease knowing that.
Were those concerts that important to you?
Let’s put it this way: if I had known I had leukaemia, I would have cancelled them. But I didn’t know, and both of them seemed important enough to me at the time. Smolik prepared a really nice, avant-garde version of ‘Lucifer’. It was more of a theatrical performance than a concert. Besides, let’s be honest, if somebody wants to give you five thousand dollars for an eight-minute show, you just don’t say no.
What about Castle Party?
We played there the following day; Behemoth was headlining. I really wanted to play because I love stirring shit up, and a Behemoth concert at a gothic festival was a kind of demonstration of strength.
You don’t like gothic stuff?
I do, I actually love bands like Fields Of The Nephilim or Sisters Of Mercy, but this was something completely different. Castle Party is about flounces and ruffles. I hate that kind of thing; it’s terribly pretentious. We were about to fucking rock that place down, and to offset that there was confetti to be blown out from the stage and girls dancing with fire. It was supposed to be heavy …
Was it?
I have never played a show in such a state and I hope I never will again. I was going through the motions the whole time. I choked on words; I didn’t finish the verses. I was taking steps back from the microphone and not singing all the lines. I was terrified. I couldn’t breathe; I was counting the minutes until the end of the show. Besides, the audience didn’t buy into us at all. I think we were too brutal for them. It was a terribly surreal experience.
Why did you even go onstage in the first place?
I felt OK, that’s true, but before the concert I took some pseudoephedrine, which gave me a solid kick for a little while. Basically, I thought I could make it. Before that, I actually took half of our promoter’s first-aid kit, too. He was suffering from asthma and had a whole set of medicines for breathing. I used all his inhalers.
So you couldn’t catch your breath before the show?
Castle Party, as the very name suggests, takes place in a castle. In order to play there, you have to climb. It’s not really a big distance, but on that day it was a real challenge for me. I lost my breath every few minutes. I had to make a few stops to get there. Each time I stopped for a couple of minutes to recover. Maybe this is what deceived me, because, as I said before, I had had problems with breathing previously, but that was always stress-induced. I was sure for the whole time that I was simply making up some of the symptoms. I knew I was sick—maybe I even knew it was serious—but I was convinced that my psyche was really adding to it. All of us joked about it, really. It was the day after the lunch with Dorota, Orion, and his girlfriend, where they all suggested that I was being a little hysterical. They didn’t take it seriously at all, despite the fact that, on the way to the festival, my lymph nodes already resembled two ping-pong balls. Dorota even sucked on them to cheer me up! I think it was only after the show that everybody knew it was not only my psyche that was showing distress signs, but my body, too.
What happened then?
Nothing in particular, but I think I must have looked like a piece of shit. Orion and Inferno dragged me out of the room and informed me that we are not playing any more shows or doing anything else before I got thoroughly examined and treated. They made it sound very firm, and this time they were really worried.
In the morning we were supposed to go to Tricity, and the next day I had the hospital booked. Dorota’s brother arranged it all. That night I slept no more than four hours. I was really suffering. I was terrified by the thought that I would have to drive across the whole country. I’m still not sure how I did it. Today, I can barely remember any of it. Actually I have just one funny image from the trip …
We were just about to get in the car when somebody comes up to us, you know, a typical Polish guy with a moustache. He was maybe forty-five. He was yelling as he saw us: ‘Miss Dorotka! Miss Dorotka! Could you please give me an autograph?’
He got the autograph, then his eyes suddenly got bigger and he asked if this was, perhaps, Mr Nergal. Dorota looked at me and then said to the guy, ‘No, it’s fucking Krzysztof Ibisz.’
Did you give the man the autograph, Mr Ibisz?
It was too late; he went away disappointed.
It’s strange that when we ask you about that day, you remember something relatively trivial.
That’s how I am. I can focus on some silly stuff and worry about trifling matters, but when I’m really sick I look at the bright side of life. Somewhere in my head I always find optimistic scenarios.
And it was with this optimism that you went to the hospital?
We were in Gdańsk by evening. I remember that my brother had sent me a text message because he was in Poland for a few days. He wanted to meet me, even for just a moment. I think he was due to return to Spain on exactly the same day as I was going in to hospital.
I evaded the meeting—or at least I tried to. I was just about to leave my apartment when I heard the doorbell. Paweł never gave up, and he paid me a surprise visit. He was there with his kids. I took him to the other room, briefly described the situation, and asked him not to tell our parents.
They didn’t know anything?
I didn’t want to upset them. Paweł promised not to say a word—he said he would keep his fingers crossed for me, and with that we said goodbye. Later, I finally got to the hospital.
What did the doctor say when he saw you?
‘Please undress, take the blood test, and then we’ll X-ray your lungs.’ Standard procedures. But he obviously noticed that I had problems breathing, because he offered me additional oxygen.
Did he tell you to stay?
Yes, for three days I had various tests and examinations.
Did the doctors indicate what the problem might be?
No. They didn’t want to upset me, I suppose. But I learned about their suspicions by accident.
I saw the message that was sent to Dorota. It touched upon three possible options. I have to admit that this message gave me chills, even though the first option it mentioned didn’t seem too bad.
Tuberculosis was first on the list. Two or three months in the hospital, and then I could go home. I thought that wasn’t the worst possible scenario. But then it got worse, because the doctors said it could also be lymphangioma or HIV. When I saw these last three letters I felt weak. Suddenly, flashing before my eyes like a twisted highlig
ht reel, were all the sexual encounters of the last few years. There were quite a few, too, but as far as I could remember, I was always careful. I don’t think I had ever had a random sexual encounter without protection. Anyway, there was only one thought in my head: ‘Be anything but not HIV.’
When did you hear the final diagnosis?
After three days I was moved to another hospital, to the haematology ward of the Medical Academy in Gdańsk. They didn’t tell me directly that it was a tumour, but there was evidence enough for me to draw a few conclusions of my own. They did a few more tests, and finally a doctor showed up at my bedside.
‘You have leukaemia.’
That’s exactly what he said. Nothing more. He just gave me my results. I waited until he left and then I burst into tears. Dorota was with me, and she also cried. It lasted a while—maybe two or three minutes. There was this huge, overwhelming feeling of debility.
Did you even know what leukaemia was?
I had no idea. I mean, I knew vaguely that it existed, and I knew that it was serious, maybe even terminal, but that was all I knew. So I wiped away the tears, picked up the phone, and started calling all the doctors I knew. The question was short and to the point: ‘What is leukaemia, and how do I fight it?’
I quickly realised that I was in for a few months of serious battle.
How did you start it?
I’m sure it sounds strange, but I asked Dorota’s brother to bring me an electric shaving machine. I decided that if I was to go into a battle, I needed a battle haircut. I shaved my hair; I only left a stripe in the middle. I was ready. I could begin to study my enemy.
What exactly did you find out?
That it was lymphoblastic leukaemia: very aggressive, but easier to defeat than myeloid leukaemia. It didn’t attack me from a position of hiding; it showed itself right away.
Did you beat yourself up about not having gone to the hospital earlier?
It was only a matter of a few weeks. Besides, I asked the doctors if an earlier visit would have changed anything and they said no, even though my condition was relatively serious. I’m guessing that without immediate medical intervention, I would have lived maybe another month or two. There was about half a litre of water in my lungs. That’s what was causing all the breathing problems.
How did it get there?
Sometimes water gathers in the lungs. Of course, not usually in such volume, but it does get there. And from there it’s filtered away. In my lungs, there was something—as it later turned out, a bloated tumour—that was stopping it. So they put a drain in me.
I now had a hole in the side of my body. Like Jesus. The difference was that they didn’t do it to me with a spear but with a special tube. For two days, gross red-yellowish liquid drained through it into a glass jar beside my bed.
Today when I look in the mirror, I see that scar—and two others from the central venous-line insertion—and I smile to myself. I give thanks to these wounds. They’re my stigmata. The scar from the drain reminds me of my first victorious battle. When the water was drained out of my lungs, I could breathe easily for the first time in many days. I felt stronger, and I could keep fighting.
Did you finally tell your parents about everything?
I called my dad first. I told him the story in great detail and I asked him to prepare my mother. Irena is a very sensitive person—sometimes I think her psyche is like that of a little girl.
What was her reaction?
It was wonderful. When my parents showed up at my bedside, they really surprised me. There was no drama in their behaviour. After all, I didn’t need their crying; I just needed their support. And that’s exactly what they gave me. They were very mature in their reaction.
When we talked about the time prior to your diagnosis, you were very tense. Now, when we talk about being in hospital, you seem relaxed. That’s surprising.
It mirrors the state of my mind at that time. When I got to know my enemy, I stopped panicking and cooled down. Diagnosis was a blow, but the numbness and doubt didn’t last long. I knew that I had a challenge. When you go through a dark forest and you know that there is something hiding in the dark, you start panicking. But when you see your enemy in the light, you focus on strategy, on how you will play it. I like fighting and playing, so I treated my sickness as a challenge, like a game of chess.
But ultimately you were playing with death. Didn’t you have any moments of doubt?
Of course I did. There was this older guy on my ward—he might have been sixty-five or so. I called him Jankowski, because he reminded me of a famous priest from Gdańsk. He was the most positive guy in the whole hospital. He always told jokes; he kept everyone’s spirits up. He had cancer, but he never showed that he was sick.
One day, they closed him down on the isolation ward. I was returning from a walk when he knocked on the glass and asked me to come to the window. He asked me how I was and wanted to know how I felt after my first chemo. He wished me all the best and … that’s the last time I ever saw him. He died two days later.
That was one of the first moments when I thought that things might end in many different ways. There would be more of these moments in the weeks to come. I met a lot of people who are not here anymore.
Didn’t that affect your optimism?
They say that your attitude toward sickness is vitally important. I didn’t know if that was true, but I assumed that’s just the way it was. So, with that in mind, even if I had moments of doubt, I tried very hard to ward off all negative thoughts.
I didn’t want to die. That was my creed. I refused to accept the fact that my life would be aborted. I still had too much to do.
How did the treatment map out?
I tenderly called it ‘throwing down the napalm’. It was a ‘total’ therapy, you could say. But a few days passed before any decision was made about how the treatment was going to proceed.
The most important decisions regarding the nature of my treatment were to be made by Professor Andrzej Hellmann, the head of the clinic. It was he who, at the very beginning, presented two distinct options to me. He spoke at length about them, but I had no idea what he meant on a medical level. All that I managed to deduce was that either we went with moderately strong chemo … or we went hardcore.
You had to decide on one of these options?
As you can imagine, I didn’t have to think for long. I don’t really like half-solutions in my life, so I chose the radical way.
Leukaemia attacked me fast and brutally, so I deemed it necessary to retaliate in the same way.
Weren’t you afraid that you wouldn’t be able to handle it?
I don’t think so. I already felt better than before my admittance to hospital—much better, in fact. The strategy of total war with cancer actually seemed quite exciting to me. Everything was filled with this kind of military terminology and metaphors. It was not a hospital, but more a front line, and I was already in the trenches from where there was no retreat. I acted according to the famous quote from Art of War by Sun Tzu: ‘If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.’
How many rounds of chemo did you receive?
Before the light therapy I took two full cycles: that equates to four chemo sessions in total. Then, as a precaution, I had to take one more before the transplant.
How did you feel after the chemo treatments?
At the beginning it was really bad. It literally brought me to my knees. I remember that for a few days I was so weak, I couldn’t even stretch. I felt completely powerless; I was lying in bed for most of the time. The biggest problem, however, was vomiting, or, more specifically, trying to prevent it.
A few years earlier, I had almost choked to death on my own vomit.
A very rock’n’roll death that would have been.
Bon Scott died that way. Jimi Hendrix did too. In my case it was a really close-run thing. It was after the last concert of the Demigod promotional tour. We played in G
dynia at the Ucho club. After the gig, of course, there was a small party. I didn’t drink much, but I had a few vodkas with Red Bull. I was home by about two in the morning, and I immediately went to bed.
I woke up before five, nauseated. I lived alone at the time. I crawled to the shitter and I put two fingers down my throat, as I always did in such situations. The problem was that whatever left my stomach didn’t make it to my mouth but instead blocked my gullet.
Suddenly, my nose got clogged, I couldn’t breathe, my eyes bulged from their sockets, and I fell to the floor. For about a minute I was saying my goodbyes to the world. Finally, something down there moved and I started coming back to life, slowly catching my breath. Since then I have just never vomited. I couldn’t. It was too much of a trauma.
So you didn’t vomit even once after chemo?
Not even once. I made it through. Of course, that was mostly thanks to the humongous amounts of anti-nausea medicines that I begged the doctors for. I was really lucky that they worked for me, because they don’t for a lot of people. They were vomiting like crazy.
Did you avoid all the other common side effects?
It varied. There were nights when I was delirious, and I had some strange visions, probably due to the medicines I was taking. There were also some moments of unusual illumination, so much so that I wanted to take a notebook and write down everything that came to me via this stream of consciousness. But I was too weak. And I constantly felt terrible.
Chemo was the worst. It seriously damaged the mucous membrane of my oral cavity. A lot of patients ended up with bleeding, wounded gums, and they couldn’t eat normally. They were fed intravenously. Before my chemo, I talked to people who had already been through it. Somebody gave me a great piece of advice: they told me to suck on ice cubes.
Did it work?
I think so, because I found it all reasonably tolerable. I had a thermos by my bed filled with ice cubes, and I always had at least one cube in my mouth. When it melted, I spat it out and took another one.
Confessions Of A Heretic: The Sacred And The Profane: Behemoth And Beyond Page 14