Doctors come and go, all asking the same questions, and I tell them the same thing: “I cannot see on the right lower side. My MRI shows brain tumors, and one is bleeding. I’ve had breast cancer and melanoma.”
It turns out that Dr. Atkins is away today but Dr. Isaacs comes in and offers words of support. She leaves. More doctors cycle through the room. A neurosurgeon swings through and advises against brain surgery in favor of radiation, which will be safer than cutting into my brain. A radiation oncologist visits and gives the same recommendation. No decisions are made. We wait for hours.
Maria calls again and again from Boston, where she is a physicist and chief of therapy in the radiation oncology department at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
“Come to the Brigham,” she insists. “The doctors here are the best. I talked to Dr. Aizer, a radiation oncologist. He says that surgery should be done first and then radiation.”
How can I possibly go? I’m lying here in the ER with a bleeding tumor in my head. Despite all my years of studying the brain, I’m not a neurologist or any other kind of medical doctor. I know close to nothing about what could happen to me. Will the tumor burst open and flood my brain with blood? Wouldn’t that kill me? I’d better not move. But Maria wants me to see the doctors she knows and trusts. What should I do?
Shortly after 8:00 p.m., the flimsy curtains part and Witek and Cheyenne appear. They canceled their trip to Montana and drove down from Pittsburgh. Oh, what a joy it is to see them! Despite my fear and despair, I’m ecstatic that they’re here. Soon after, Kasia arrives. She took the Acela train from New Haven and made it just before the storm. Mirek and I are so happy to have everyone together, to breathe the smell of their bodies and touch their faces, kiss their cheeks. Kasia is very tired; a few hours earlier, she herself was seeing patients. She lies down with me on the cot and we snuggle closely like we did when she was my little baby. Witek and Cheyenne fetch sushi from the hospital cafeteria, and we share a feast on my bed amid the IV lines and crumpled sheets. We’re surrounded by the frightening sounds of the ER, but we’re together in this ordeal, my family and I.
At midnight, they leave. I remain in the ER listening to beeping and more beeping, to the tragic noises of people in desperate need of help. Nurses peek in from time to time, and I plead with them to transfer me to a quieter place. At three in the morning, they move me to a room in the ER that I share with an older woman who is in serious pain and surrounded by a large family.
In the morning, Mirek and my children return, and our waiting resumes. It’s Saturday, and the hospital is overcrowded. No doctors stop in to see me. Nothing is happening. By noon, we’ve made our decision—we are leaving here and going to the Brigham in Boston tomorrow. But it isn’t as easy as we thought. The attending physician refuses to approve it, and the nurse tells us that insurance will not pay for the ER visit if I check out against medical advice.
“I’m afraid to leave without their approval,” I tell Kasia. “What if the tumor bleeds even more? And this hospital visit will cost us tons of money if insurance doesn’t pay!”
But Kasia is checking on her iPhone for the patient’s bill of rights and the insurance rules, which contradict the nurse. “It’s not true,” Kasia says. “We are leaving, Mom.”
We head north to Boston early the next day, Sunday, January 25. Before we leave, my friend Jania, a hairdresser, comes to my home to cut my hair. I called her at dawn and told her my news, and she rushed over, arriving in her pajamas at 7:00 a.m. I ask her to give me a crewcut in case they open my skull.
“It will be easier for the wound to heal,” I explain.
Mirek and I pack our Toyota RAV4 with our trainers and road bikes so we can use them as stationary bikes in my sister’s basement. We agree that no matter what happens, our athletic training can’t stop. I also take my skis. Just in case.
Mirek, Kasia, and I hit the wintry roads, snow falling lightly, as Witek and Cheyenne follow in their car. We pass a nearby construction site, where a Giant supermarket is being built. I have been so excited in recent months that we will finally have a decent grocery store in the neighborhood and we’ll no longer have to drive for miles in traffic just to do our shopping.
Will I live to see it open? I wonder.
I feel the urge to talk, to plan the future for my family. I’m sure I’m going to die—not right away, but soon, maybe in a few days or weeks. I have, of course, researched my condition on the Internet. The prognosis for metastatic melanoma in the brain is terrible, especially if you are over sixty and you have three or more tumors. I have three tumors, and I’m sixty-three years old. Four to seven months of life is all I’ve got left. I will be dead as early as May, as late as August. I won’t make it to sixty-four.
As I sit next to Mirek, who is driving, I can’t stop thinking about my family’s future. I need to write my will and create a trust for my assets to make things easier for them. I want my belongings to be fairly divided with no arguments, no lawyers, no complications.
“Mirek will have to sell the house,”
