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The only issue I was dealing with now was the fact it could come back. There was no way to predict whether it would, or how bad it would if it did. We could keep her on medication, but that only went so far when it came to this kind of cancer. She was an older woman. She’d turned seventy-eight that year. Her husband had passed the year before, and her kids were all grown and had families of their own.
“My time has come,” she said, though there was nothing in her face that told me she was upset about it. “I have lived a full life, and it’s time I move on now. I guess if we have to do the surgery, so be it, but I would rather just let things take their course.”
“You will be a lot more comfortable with the masses removed,” I’d promised her.
It was the only way she had agreed to let me do the surgery, and when I walked into the room today, I was glad to see she looked like she felt better.
“I don’t know how you manage it, but you are a miracle worker,” she said.
“Mrs. Elliot, I’m telling you, it’s simple science. You have growths in your body that press against your nerves. That hurts. If you let me take out the masses, then you don’t have the pressure, and it doesn’t hurt. It’s really that simple.”
“Mom, listen to him when he explains those things to you, and you might not have such a tough time remembering when we talk about it later,” her daughter, Nancy, told her.
“Nancy, Nancy, I know what I’m doing. You don’t need to be telling me,” she said.
“Your mom’s in a feisty mood today,” I commented.
“You’re telling me,” Nancy said with a shake of her head. But, she had a smile on her face, and I knew she was dedicated to caring for her mother. She knew her mom was very sick, and the two of them seemed to get along well enough I knew neither minded it when the other teased them.
“How are you feeling?” I asked my patient.
“Better than I was, that’s for sure. I just don’t like this new diet you put me on,” she said.
“What’s wrong with it?” I asked.
“There’s nothing on it that tastes good,” she complained. “If you could put something on it with any taste in it at all, I might do better.”
I laughed. “You have to get used to the taste. Right now, you eat way too much processed food. When you get used to how food should really taste, you’ll realize just how artificial your life has been,”
“I doubt that. I just want to have my coffee. Can you at least give an old woman her coffee? I’m not going to be around forever, and I would rather be on my death bed knowing that I had my coffee rather than the fact that I got to stick around for three more days because you didn’t let me have any. It’s one of the few things that brings me joy these days.”
I sighed.
“Alright. I’ll make a bargain with you. I’m going to hand your new plan over to Nancy, and I’ll let her be the one to ration out your allotment of coffee during the day. If you aren’t going to listen to what she says, I’m going to take it from you altogether, you hear? I don’t need you to make her life harder than it already is.”
“Really?” Mrs. Elliot lit up. “Bless your soul. I would love that.”
“Alright, I’ll have one of the nurses pull together a diet that’s less strict,” I said. “And we’ll see how you feel. But I’m warning you now, if things take a turn for the worst, I’m going to put you back on something that’s strict. I don’t want you to struggle with this.”
“That’s fair,” Mrs. Elliot said.
I was happy to see the rest of the progress she had made over the past two weeks, and after answering any more of their questions, I headed out to find the nurse. I had to give her the directions to pass along to Mrs. Elliot, then I had to get back in there to talk to her about the diet I wanted her on.
She had to avoid processed foods and sugar. Food that was making her cancer worse. It wasn’t something that happened very often, but the fact that she was dying – and she could change so much of it if she would just cut out the sugar – left me feeling like I had no choice but to cut it out of her diet completely.
But, she also had a point. She was old, and she wasn’t going to be around forever. I didn’t want her to spend the rest of her days missing one of the few things that brought her joy in life.
It was a tough balance, that was for sure, but as a doctor, I had to figure out what the best compromise would be.
It was my job to make sure her life was as comfortable as possible, and I felt there were times that meant she was going to get to have things that weren’t necessarily good for her. But, I knew having that coffee once a day wasn’t going to set her back too much.
Not enough for me to restrict it entirely anyway.
Then, after talking with Nancy to make sure she knew what her mother was supposed to be doing, I moved on with my day. However, I did check my phone to see if I had any text messages from Harper.
There wasn’t anything yet, but I was only slightly disappointed.
She was amazing. Bottom line, she was.
