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‘But…’ I want to argue. I want to insist that she’s got it wrong, because what about all that damn chemo? The tumor had shrunk, she said. That’s why I’m here, with bloody bandages and still so much pain.
‘I’m sorry.’ Dr. Stein looks near tears, which appalls me.
‘But how?’ My voice is a plaintive whisper. ‘I was having the chemo…’ I’m too shocked for tears, too blindsided to realize what this means.
‘Sometimes that happens. Tumors shrink even as the cancer is spreading elsewhere. This is metastatic cancer, and we still don’t completely understand how it works. It was only when I began the surgery that I realized what we might be dealing with.’
My head feels fuzzy, and I can’t think. I know I need to ask questions, important questions, but they don’t come, and so I just stare. Dr. Stein smiles at me, her face far too full of sympathy.
‘I know this is a lot to take in.’
Somehow I manage to form some words. ‘So… I’ll need to have more chemo?’
Something flashes across Dr. Stein’s face so quickly I can’t, in my spinning state, make it out. I realize I’ve asked a well-duh question, because if I’ve got that much cancer, of course I need to have more chemo. A lot more.
Except I don’t.
‘Grace…’ She swallows and I feel a blind, buzzing panic take over me. ‘Of course we can discuss all your options, but if you want my opinion, both as your doctor and a person who could be facing the same situation one day, I don’t think it’s worth it, to go through more rounds of chemo and feel miserable and sick the whole time. It’s… it’s not going to help enough. The cancer has spread too far.’
I have no words. I feel empty inside, everything blank. I just stare. And yet some part of me, some hard little kernel, remains unsurprised. Wasn’t I afraid of this? Wasn’t I expecting it, even?
‘We can talk about clinical trials, some new drugs that are being tested, but to be involved in a trial you have to have quite a hospitalized existence, something that you’re of course going to want to think about.’
I nod, unable to take it in. Any of it, all of it.
‘I’m sorry,’ Dr. Stein says quietly.
I try to nod but I’m not sure I pull it off. Everything feels difficult, as if I have to remind myself to breathe, to blink, to be. ‘So…’ I lick my lips. My voice is a thread. ‘So how long… do you think…’ I trail off, unable to frame the question, even in my own mind. But of course Dr. Stein knows what I mean.
‘It’s impossible to say for sure. But with the rate of the cancer’s progression, and the number of organs that are now affected…’ She pauses, and I feel something wild growing inside me, something that is ready to rage and scream. Don’t say it, I want to shout at her. Don’t tell me how little time I have left.
‘I would say probably not more than six months,’ she says carefully. ‘And most likely, more like three.’
I turn my head away from her, needing at least that much privacy. I have probably no more than three months left to live. I almost want to laugh, in that wild, raging way. How can this possibly be? My mother lived with breast cancer for six years. Why do I get six months or less?
‘We can talk again when you’ve had time to think and process this. There are some drugs we could try – Kadcyla has been shown to extend life by several months in cases similar to yours, although yours has advanced significantly…’ She trails off, and I cannot summon a response. ‘I’m sure you’ll have more questions, and we can discuss pain management, and, when the time comes, end-of-life care…’
I don’t say anything, because I don’t trust myself to speak. I don’t want to talk about end-of-life care; I don’t even want to think about it.
Dr. Stein touches my hand lightly. ‘I have a seven-year-old son too,’ she says quietly. ‘I’m sorry.’ She waits a few seco
nds while I remain motionless, staring at the wall, trying not to blink because then the tears will fall. So many tears. After another agonizing second, she leaves me alone.
The next few hours pass in a haze. I lie in bed and stare at the wall, everything in me numb and blank even as a part of me thinks how this is some of my precious time, and I’m wasting it. Wasting everything.
Three months. That’s only October. And I might be dead by then. I fight that bizarre impulse to laugh, because it just seems so impossible. Yes, yes, I know I have cancer. I’ve felt utterly wretched from the chemo. But underneath the misery and nausea and fear, I honestly thought I was going to beat this. Because I couldn’t imagine the alternative.
Eventually my mind drifts, painfully, to Isaac. How will I tell him? And who will take care of him? The answer feels obvious, even as I shrink away from it: Heather. After seven years, Heather will get her son back. It turned out I was only borrowing him, after all.
Dr. Stein discharges me the next day, with a follow-up appointment in a couple of days to check on my bandages and drains, which I have, cringing all the while, been taught how to empty. Hopefully the drains will be removed then, the bandages a few days after, and the sutures and steri-strips next week.
In a normal case – although what is normal about any of this, I don’t know – I could go back to work in three weeks. But I don’t think I’ll go back to work now, ever, yet another thought I can’t fully absorb yet.
I feel like an old woman, hobbling into a taxi cab, my body bruised, bloody, aching. Decaying. I look down at my hands, the dark red nail polish on my fingernails. I splurged on a manicure a few days ago, because I wanted some part of me to look pretty.
And my hands do look pretty; I’ve always liked them. Long fingers, neat nails. They don’t look like cancer patient hands. And then I wonder if I will still be wearing this nail polish when I die.
The doorman, Sergei, greets me with his usual restrained enthusiasm as I walk slowly into the building. He takes my roll-along bag and escorts me to the elevator.
