Running and Life, or, Running versus Death
Sub-8 Mile's Battle-o-Rama
(maybe this story will, in some way, help someone you know; if so, that's cool. oh, and F Cancer.)
Chapter 15
I wake! Pain wracks my body. Deep inside my torso, radiating out through my entire back.
I writhe. Nurses enter the room and do … something. Untethered from the earth, I float away.
***
September 21, 2016
I drift back into consciousness. It’s early morning, just after 5am. No pain. I drift for an hour.
Around 6am, the doctor - the oncologist I saw yesterday - comes in. He looks like he hasn’t slept.
He tells me that he spent the night calling and emailing medical specialists and research experts all over the U.S. Nobody has heard of a case like this. There is no medical precedent. There is no established treatment protocol. As far as the medical community is concerned, there has never been a patient like me.
But, the doctor says, since I’ve made it this far, why not try something? If I’m up for it, he says, they’ve come up with some ideas.
In my oxygen-deficient state, I have no clue that he’s asking whether I would just prefer to be kept pain-free and then expire sometime later today.
I say that yes, I am up for it. The doctor lays out the ideas.
No radiation, because they would have to burn and destroy my entire chest and lungs. Plus, they figure that I also have cancer elsewhere in my body. A person couldn’t survive the amount of radiation needed to tackle that much tumor mass.
So: heavy doses of chemo, chemo, and more chemo. Something will die. Me, or the cancer.
Lying in the hospital bed hooked up to tubes and machines, I’m intently hearing the doctor’s words.
“OK,” I say, with quiet conviction. I’m weak; the only thing keeping me temporarily alive is the don’t-die-just-yet cocktail flowing into me. But I’ve got a steely glint in my eye, and the oncologist sees it.
“All right then,” he says. “The lab will prepare your treatment. Let’s run some scans now so we know how extensive the cancer is and where it has metastasized. When you’re done with that, we’ll be ready to start the infusion.”
What’s terrifying me right now is the strong possibility that the cancer has spread to my brain.
***
6:20 am. An attendant shows up at my door, and rolls in a wheeled metal stretcher. I raise my head and greet him.
“Oh!” he says, jumping in surprise. “Uh … I’ll be right back.”
A minute later, he reappears with another wheeled stretcher, this one with a padded surface. He and another attendant load me on, then he wheels me down the hallway and into an elevator.
“I didn’t realize you were going to get scans,” the attendant says casually. “I thought they called for a meat wagon.”
MEAT WAGON?? Wtf.
***
7am. I’m back in the room. A team of doctors is assembled in front of my bed. They’re informing me.
As we already knew, my lungs are nearly 100% full of hundreds of tumors. According to the scans, there is about zero chance that I’m getting enough oxygen to be alive. But here I am.
My abdomen is also full of “multiple, innumerable, uncountable tumors” that are collectively crushing my stomach, intestines, and everything else. That’s why I have been unable to eat. Pressing up against the inside of my back, these expanding tumors have been causing my steadily-increasing back pain this summer. Kidneys, spleen, everything, flattened. The odds are about nil for a human to be alive in this condition.
My liver is also full of cancer, they inform me. Hundreds and hundreds of small, multiplying tumors. Liver failure should have happened already -- meaning I should be dead from that.
And there is one, single, ominous bone tumor, on my middle-lower spine. From there, the cancer would be expected to climb up my spine and into my brain -- except, the situation in my lungs will end things before the cancer reaches my brain.
Hearing all this, I experience horror -- and relief. Nothing in my brain; nothing gonna be in my brain. OK, at least there’s that.
They have a heavy-duty mixture of chemo drugs prepared for me. They commence their caveats:
This cancer is advanced, rapidly growing, and spreading. If I take the chemo, the cancer could kill me soon anyway.
This not-commonly-used chemo is particularly toxic, and my system is already under extreme duress. The chemo could kill me at any time.
If the chemo works well, the hundreds of nodules in my lungs may dissolve into mush and I could drown in it.
Also, they say, normally, when tumors break down, uric acid is produced and then processed out of the body by the liver and kidneys. But I have such an unprecedented, massive “tumor burden” that there could very well be so much uric acid that it kills me, especially with my liver full of cancer and presumably barely functioning.
And there’s a question about my heart. There is no telling whether or not it will be able to pump all of the chemo and other infusions along with all of the broken-down tumor proteins and other waste products.
If, they tell me, if I survive all these hazards, then only time will tell. They don’t say the odds. All they say is that it comes down to a test of endurance.
I clench my jaw. I make the decision.
At 7:30 am, they begin the infusion, then exit.
***
I already know, deeply, instinctively, that my system will not shut down. My heart will keep pumping. My liver will keep functioning. I don’t know how I know, but I know.
Well ... the drowning question is a bit troubling, but I can’t worry about that right now. As far as I am concerned, hazards be d@mned. This fight is between the cancer, the chemo, and me. And I sure as f*** am betting on me.
A test of endurance.
I prepare to endure.