I had an appointment yesterday with one of the doctors who will be involved in my upcoming surgery. The appointment was at the City of Hope in Duarte and I had never been there before. I think my expectations of the actual facility were too high. Steve and I discussed it afterward and we both expected something else, something better for lack of a better word. I guess whenever I thought of the City of Hope I expected the Disneyland of all hospitals, a magical place where dreams really do come true. That sounds cheesy, I know, but that's the best way to describe what was in my head about this place that I'd heard so many great things about.
We arrived at 1:30 pm for a 2 pm appointment. But as it turned out, they wanted us to be there at 2 pm for a 3 pm appointment because there was a lot of "paperwork" to complete. I hate that. I hate wasting time, especially now. I guess most people really take a long time to complete medical forms but for some reason, I have always been very fast at it. So we sat waiting for quite a long time. I guess I was a bit irritated about the time wasted so I may have been a little hard to please. I was also irritated because while I was there, I found out about Michael Jackson while watching tv in the waiting room and it bothered me that his death upstaged the death of Farrah Fawcett, who deserved a dignified media response after her valiant battle. Anyway, the facility seemed not to be running as efficiently as I would have believed City of Hope would operate. I mean, after all, they
are dealing with people who don't want to be wasting what precious time they have left sitting around waiting for appointments.
By the time we finally saw the doctor's assistant, who came in to go over my history, it was already 4 pm. I was not happy and I kept telling Steve I just wanted to go home. I realized later why that place affected me so much and I'll go into that later. But the "nurse practitioner" was very kind and relatively no-nonsense in getting my history. She seemed to understand everything without any explanations so for that I was grateful. Finally, at about 4:20 we saw the doctor, Dr. Morgan. He was such a funny looking guy, tall with a big belly and the craziest hair I've ever seen on a doctor. It was gray and really thick and messy like he hadn't had a decent haircut in a while. It was bedhead to be exact.
I liked Dr. Morgan. He was smart and articulate and took his time explaining things. He was very thorough. He finally shed some light on the reason Dr. Paz kept saying that the cancer had to be somewhere else. Dr. Morgan explained that research has shown that in patients who have my type of metastatic tumors in their abdominal area, the likelihood that cancer will grow on the peritoneum is very high. The peritoneum is a thin membrane-type sac surrounding the organs in the abdomen. And even when the cancer is not seen on the peritoneum, there is likely microscopic cancer that will eventually become a full blown tumor later on. For that reason, Dr. Morgan's role in my surgery is to administer a "chemo wash" of the abdomen while I am under anasthesia. During the surgery they will insert two tubes into my abdomen, fill my abdomen with chemo (likely oxalyplatin), let it slosh around for an hour and a half and then drain it.
I watched Dr. Morgan as he spoke and I listened hard so I would remember as much as I could. He said things like, "In the past, your cancer was considered incurable. But we just don't know anymore. There's been a lot of research." He also told me that the type of treatment I am getting is just in it's infancy. But I have a lot going for me: I am young, in great health otherwise, I've responded well to treatment, and I have very little cancer that they can tell. As I listened, I kept thinking,
I can't believe he's talking about me! It seemed so surreal. Maybe I really am in denial but when he said the word
INCURABLE, I couldn't accept that he was talking about me.
The surgery, it turns out, is going to be probably the hardest thing I've ever done in my life...way harder than having triplets or anything I've done in my life up to now. The surgery itself will take at least 6 hours, maybe longer as it's very involved. Then the chemo wash will be 35 times stronger and more concentrated than what I normally get during an infusion. Steve likened the whole thing to, "a good, old-fashioned ass kicking." Yep, it's gonna hurt. Now I'm scared, terrified in fact. I might have been better off not knowing the particulars.
I realized later why I was a little unnerved by being at City of Hope. As we navigated the building where I had my appointment, I couldn't help but notice the amount of patients at the facility. There were a lot and I could tell they were patients because, for one thing, all patients had to wear hospital bracelets. And for another, a lot of people were bald or wearing scarves. And many of them were very sick, I could tell just by looking at them. And I kept thinking,
I am not one of these people. This is not me, I am not one of them. I wanted to get out of there, fast.
When I got home, I went through my mail and there was a thinking-of-you card from my Aunt Kathy. Inside it she included a picture that she found of a surgeon performing an operation with Jesus standing opposite him over the patient. One of Jesus' hands was on the patient and the other on the hand of the surgeon. The caption read, "With you always." It was exactly what I needed at that moment.
