Moments later, Kasia responds with an e-mail:
Mama!!!!! Ok!!!! I respect your decisions and will do as you wish.
I don’t call the doctor. A little while later, Kasia calls me and offers again to contact them herself. For whatever reason, I don’t object anymore. An hour later I get a phone call from Dr. Atkins’s nurse, who says she received Kasia’s e-mail and wants me to come immediately to the hospital. She’s scheduled an emergency MRI for an hour from now.
“Let’s go and get the MRI,” Mirek says. Even though he isn’t pushing me, something about the way he speaks makes me suspicious.
Why is Kasia plotting against me? Mirek is on her side too! They’re all against me!
I’m still annoyed but I agree to go. I pick up my car keys and head outside.
“But you’ve been having some trouble with directions. Why don’t you just relax and let me drive?” Mirek suggests.
“I always drive!” I retort, and I climb into the driver’s seat. He reluctantly gives in.
No sooner do we get onto the highway, however, when he starts shouting: “Watch out! Look out!”
What is he going on about?
“You’re not inside the lane!” he cries. “Stay in the center! No, no, you’re crossing over the line again! Pull back, pull back!”
“I’m fine!” I insist. “It just looks different from where you’re sitting. Why are you so critical of me all the time? Can’t you just be quiet?”
But cars behind us start honking, and I realize I’m about to hit the truck to my left. I swerve sharply at the last minute. Mirek has his head in his hands.
“Oh, stop it,” I say. “Nothing happened. It’s not a big deal. Get over it.”
With no further drama, we check in at the Georgetown MRI center. A nurse inserts the needle into a vein in my arm so that contrast liquid can be injected. I lie on a narrow table, and a technician slides me into a powerful magnet that looks like a tight tube. With my head secured in a plastic crate and my body wrapped in white blankets, I look like a mummy.
I remain motionless while the magnetic field is switched on and off to the accompaniment of loud tapping noises from vibrating coils that are invisible to me. Unable to see anything in this tunnel, I am alone with the mangled thoughts in my confused brain. The knock-knock-knock, knock-knock sound of the MRI machine, repeated over and over in varying rhythms and pitches, is strangely relaxing. I like the solitude. I feel cozy and safe, happily cocooned in this tight space. It shields me from the nonstop stimuli of the outside world.
After an hour, the MRI wraps up. I dress and find Mirek waiting in the hallway.
“Done,” I say. “Let’s go home.”
Before we reach the parking garage, Mirek’s cell phone rings.
“What? Why?” he says. “Oh, okay, we’ll be there right away.”
He turns to me and says, “We have to go immediately to the emergency room.”
“Why? What’s happening?”
“The nurse said your brain is very swollen,” Mirek says.
As we walk over, I realize my headache has returned, insistent and intense.
In the ER, they take me quickly to a back room and check my blood pressure. It is very high. They lead me to a cubicle, where I lie down in bed behind a curtain amid the awful noises of trauma and emergency. People outside my cubicle run and shout and cry and scream. Here I am again, just five months after they discovered the bleeding tumor in my brain.
But I’m not worried in the least. In fact, I don’t fully understand why we’re here. Mirek’s eyes are sad, his face troubled, but I can’t fathom why he’s upset. I try to cheer him up, try to joke. But his expression doesn’t change. He just holds my hand and looks at me.
After a while, my oncologist Dr. Atkins enters my cubicle with two of his nurses. They look at me with such sorrow that I think some kind of a mistake has been made. They can’t be worrying about me—why should they?
“The MRI shows new tumors in your brain,” Dr. Atkins says. “The immunotherapy didn’t work. I’m really sorry.”
I look from face to face. Mirek is somber. Dr. Atkins seems deeply disappointed, as if he’s failed me.
My poor doctor. He doesn’t understand—I’m fine!
“There’s also swelling and serious inflammation of brain tissue,” Dr. Atkins continues. “I’m prescribing high doses of steroids right away to reduce the swelling, and I’m admitting you to the hospital.”
Oh, Dr. Atkins—I feel so sorry for him. Let me reassure him.
“No, no, please, wait,” I say. “I don’t want steroids. From what I’ve read, steroids will reduce my immune response and interfere with my treatment. And I know the immunotherapy worked. I know it. I’m sorry about this inflammation in my brain but you know it can happen. There are often setbacks with immunotherapy before there’s improvement. Don’t worry, please. I will be fine.”
I look at Dr. Atkins, then at Mirek, whose eyes are filled with tears. The two nurses also look as if they are about to cry.
All of this fuss for no reason! Let me explain to them what’s happening—maybe that will calm them down.
“Tumors often get larger at first when this treatment begins,” I say. “I remember that, I swear I do, from several scientific publications I read just weeks ago. The tumors you see on the MRI may look larger than they really are because my T cells are fighting the melanoma cells and killing them. What you’re seeing is evidence of this dramatic war in my brain. We have to give my body time to clean up this ugly battlefield. We just have to
