~Upstream and Down~

I sit in the second floor waiting room at Dana Farber Cancer Institute while Bruce is taken to a room to pee in a cup and have some blood drawn.   He’d already peed in a jug for 24 hours and dropped that off to be analyzed for funky monoclonal plasma cells. They take his "vital signs"--height, weight, blood pressure. He’s back soon and we get coffee and ride the crowded elevator to meet our nurse practitioner Mary, who will tell us what to expect of this journey into cancer land. Whenever anyone gets off the elevator, I check the floor chart to see what his or her cancer might be. Awful names! We get off at “hematological carcinomas.” Seventh floor. The end result of today’s visit is Bruce’s first shot of Velcade and his first two oral chemo pills: Revlimid and Dexamethasone--the RVD chemo treatment that makes Multiple Myeloma quake—we hope. “One pill makes you happy and one pill makes you small. One pill…something, something…” I can’t help singing this. I’...

--> There are countless stories sitting in the upholstered chairs in Dana Farber Cancer Center's waiting rooms , feet resting on worn spots in the carpet, where so many other feet have rested in the past. Most stories will go untold. But sometimes a person opens up and shares a little. Bruce and I were seated diagonally behind a man who was waiting to be called for his blood draw. I noticed a little Chihuahua peering at me from beneath the man’s legs; he was drinking from a PETCO watering dish. When the man scooped him up, I realized there was a larger dog lying on the floor.  So I sauntered by to get a cup of coffee. Actually, I didn't care about the coffee; it was the dogs I wanted to see.The man gave me a smile so I asked about the dogs, which, he said, are trained companion dogs. He told me he was at one time a nurse, but he almost died on the job when he unexpectedly passed out and had to be intubated. What a way to find out you...

Cancer is a stealthy opponent, wreaking damage before you suspect its presence. The first inkling that Bruce might be facing “something” was last summer. I was headed to the beach with a friend, while he was headed to the doctors for his annual CT scan by his cardiologist, who regularly checks the size of his aortic aneurism. We’d thought the aneurysm was a big deal when it was first discovered several years ago! It was!   But in effect, it was, if not life saving, the issue that got B into cancer treatment sooner than otherwise. For that, we thank the dreaded aneurysm. When I got to the beach I decided to call B and see how his appointment went. “The good news,” he tells me, “is that the aneurysm is stable; it hasn’t grown in size. But,” he tells me in what sounds like a nonchalant voice, “the scan shows a spot on my tenth rib. So I matched his nonchalant tone, “Lots of times the spots turn out to be nothing—just shadows," I tell him. I stayed at th...