“Perhaps,” he responds, and he says again how sorry he is. I thank him and we hang up.
I stare at the darkened cell phone.
Shit. I’m dead.
I’m dead either way. If I tell anyone at Georgetown what Dr. Aizer found on the scans, they’ll refuse to give me the infusion, which is my only chance at salvation. But I’m dead if I don’t tell them because subjecting these new tumors to immunotherapy could kill me.
What do I do?
Dr. Atkins’s report states I have no new tumors. And his nurse told me the scan was clean. They cleared me for treatment! Did he misread the MRI? Radiology is more an art than a precise science, and it’s possible he didn’t see them. Dr. Aizer did say they are very small.
Or maybe Dr. Aizer is wrong. Maybe what he saw aren’t tumors but something else, a scar from my radiation, perhaps, or an artifact?
I don’t know.
I can postpone the treatment. I can get the new tumors radiated, as Dr. Aizer insists, and then wait two weeks after radiation—as the protocol requires—before getting another scan. If that one comes out clean, then perhaps I can start immunotherapy—if there is still room for me in the trial. But if new tumors keep popping up, it will be an endless cycle: I’ll get a scan that finds a new tumor, get radiation, get a new scan that finds another new tumor, and on and on and on. I can’t keep radiating every single one—I’ll have no brain left. Meanwhile, I’ll be locked out of the clinical trial. They have very stringent timelines for being included, and no doubt there are many other desperate people eager to take my place.
This is my only shot.
I’m supposed to start the trial tomorrow.
What do I do?
The sky is so blue. What a glorious day.
No. No question. I’m doing this. It’s my only hope.
I’m not going to say anything about the new tumors to anyone. I’m not telling Dr. Atkins what Dr. Aizer said, and I’m not telling Mirek or Kasia or Witek or my sister. I’m making this decision for myself, by myself. Nothing is going to stop me from entering this clinical trial. I would rather take my chances than die without trying it.
That night at home, I mention nothing to Mirek. When Kasia calls, I calmly tell her I’m looking forward to the next day. I share nothing about my dilemma or the choice I’ve made.
I maintain my strategic silence the next morning when I march into the hospital and head with Mirek into the infusion unit, a large room with individual patient cubicles partitioned by curtains. After I sign in and sit in my cubicle, Dr. Atkins enters with his entourage of smiling nurses and greets me.
“Are you ready?” he asks.
It’s my last chance to call this off.
“So, everything is okay, yes?” I ask.
“Yes,” he says.
“Will you be doing brain scans during this therapy? To check for any new tumors?”
“No, we won’t need them for another three months,” he says. “This is going to work.”
I watch him walk away. I feel like a paratrooper jumping off a plane into the dark night, hoping that my parachute will open.
I jump.
As I sit in a reclining chair, the nurse punctures my arm for an IV that begins to drip the drugs into my bloodstream.
I rest my head on the back of the chair and close my eyes.
Maybe this will kill me. But I’ll definitely die without it. Dr. Atkins believes it will work. And I trust this immunotherapy even more than I trust him.
I will live, I tell myself. I will live.
On the drive home, I tell Mirek my secret. “Dr. Aizer found three new tumors in my brain yesterday but I didn’t tell Dr. Atkins,” I say. “Nothing is keeping me from this trial.”
Mirek’s smile is hesitant but he nods his approval. “I understand,” he says. I call Kasia and tell her too. To my surprise, she—like Mirek—approves of my decision.
“Brave mum,” she says to me in Polish.
A few days later, Kasia and I have a phone conference with Dr. Aizer. He reiterates that it could be dangerous for me to continue with immunotherapy with three new tumors growing in my brain. When I tell him I will not be getting any brain scans for three months, he becomes even more worried. But Kasia and I remain united around my decision. We listen but we really don’t want to hear his concerns. I don’t know it at the time, but after we hang up, Dr. Aizer goes into my sister’s office at the Brigham and tells her he is very worried about me. She hears him out but she knows I have made up my mind. She keeps the conversation to herself until long after I have completed my treatment.
On May 5, three weeks after my first infusion, I go in for my second. Mirek and I awaken early and drive to the Georgetown hospital to try to find a precious parking spot in the underground garage of the old, cramped complex. We proceed through a maze of corridors to the Lombardi cancer center, passing by a portrait of the pope that the hospital staff use as a landmark for giving directions. (“Go straight by the pope to get to the infusion center,” they say, or “Turn right by the pope if you’re here for an MRI.”)
As usual, the waiting room at Lombardi is filled with patients, some bald from chemotherapy, some in wheelchairs, some limping on their canes. But most look healthy and normal. The techs draw my blood and we wait for the lab results. After a couple of hours, we see the doctor, who evaluates the blood tests to decide whether I am well enough to receive an infusion that day. It feels like waiting to learn if I’ve won the
