Mirek and I head home in separate cars. I follow him closely because my vision loss makes it very difficult to drive. It’s dark and I have a hard time navigating the winding, wintry roads. Try as I might, I can’t stay in the middle of the lane.
When we get home, I call the airline and postpone my flight by a day. I also call Witek to say he should still go to Big Sky but I’ll be late joining him. Tomorrow, January 23, is his birthday, and I feel terrible I won’t be there. I call a few friends who are headed to the conference. “You wouldn’t believe what’s happened!” I say in a cheery voice. “I cannot see well and have to have it checked out before I join you. I’ll just be delayed by one day.” I try not to let my fear enter my voice.
Early the next morning, we go to a nearby imaging center for the MRI. I insist that I do the driving because I always drive and I want us both to feel that everything is normal. But I drive very poorly, weaving across the lanes. “I’m fine!” I snap, nerves frayed, when Mirek asks to take the wheel. “Leave me alone!”
Somehow, we arrive at the MRI center without getting into an accident. The front-desk person checks me in. Only then does it really hit me that I am being scanned for a possible tumor in my brain.
I am nauseated with fear as I prepare for the MRI, which is going to create a very detailed image of my brain and perhaps reveal some horrifying things. A nurse inserts an intravenous line in my arm, which delivers into my bloodstream a contrast liquid that is absorbed by brain tissue. The MRI will use a computerized system to produce pictures (or scans) of my brain that doctors will examine for tumors, strokes, nerve damage, and other abnormalities that x-rays, CT scans, and ultrasound machines cannot reliably detect.
A technician slides me into the tight tube of the MRI machine and turns on the noisy magnet. I lie motionless for an hour before the scan is complete and I am finally free. When we head home to wait for the results, Mirek drives. I am completely exhausted, drained by fear and the stress of the scanning procedure and what it might reveal.
We are home by midmorning; my flight leaves this afternoon. I pack and repack, adding this and that: an extra pair of warm gloves and socks, the sunscreen that I almost forgot. I am hoping the doctor will call soon with the only possible news—that it’s not a tumor.
But the impossible happens.
At around 11:00 a.m., the phone rings. I pick it up and sit down on a stool as Mirek runs to join me in the kitchen.
“I am so sorry,” Dr. Shmorhun says. “I don’t know how to even tell you this.” His voice breaks; he pauses. “The scan found three tumors in your brain,” he finally continues. “You have to go to the ER right away. One tumor is bleeding, which strongly suggests it might be melanoma. Melanoma tumors have a tendency to bleed. It can be very dangerous.”
Watching my face, Mirek knows our world has taken a tragic turn.
I think about the weather.
It is a bright, sunny day here in the Washington suburbs. Snowstorms are in the forecast for later today and tomorrow. And it’s going to snow in Montana.
I try to stand up from the kitchen stool but can’t move.
I am going to die.
For a fleeting moment, that thought floods through me. But I kick it away with all my might and spring into action. My response to emergencies of any sort is to throw myself into a rational, organized plan and grasp whatever control I can.
I hang up with Dr. Shmorhun and immediately telephone my son. “Witek, I cannot go to Big Sky. I have tumors in my brain,” I say. “I am so sorry. It is your birthday, and I am not going to make it.” He is, of course, shocked, and I feel like a bad mother for putting my family through so much pain again. I telephone Kasia in New Haven and my sister, Maria, in Boston. Both are stunned. I call my colleagues at the conference and suggest they ask a past president to substitute for me and deliver my speech, which I will e-mail to them. They, too, are dumbstruck.
For my sake and my family’s, I am determined to get the best care possible, and I begin to research my options. Staying focused on a plan of attack keeps me from obsessing over the tumors that, at this moment, are flourishing in my brain.
I call Dr. Claudine Isaacs, my breast cancer oncologist at Georgetown University Hospital. “A horrible thing has happened. I have tumors in my brain,” I say. “Maybe it is breast cancer metastases. But one tumor is bleeding, so my family doctor thinks it is melanoma. Where should I go?”
When she speaks, it is clear she is shaken. She tells me to go immediately to the ER at Georgetown and directs me to see Dr. Michael B. Atkins, a melanoma oncologist who she says is phenomenal. She says she will meet me there.
From the corner of the hallway, poised for my trip, my skis stare at me—sleek, beautiful Rossignols that I bought last year. They respond to the slightest movement of my feet, my toes—even my mind, it seems. With them I fly through the snow, fluid and graceful. Now I’m headed to the hospital, and they will have to stay behind.
It’s Friday afternoon before a snowstorm, not a good time to enter an emergency room. My blood pressure is sky-high, perhaps from anxiety, perhaps from a bleeding brain tumor. The nurses give me steroids to prevent brain swelling caused by tissue irritation from the bleeding tumor. I lie for hours on a cot behind a flimsy curtain. All around
