God transforms through suffering and man oh man can she write. This should go into the Bureau of Standards and Measurements for what we writers call "voice." Thank you for the gifts you bring us, Hilary. You remain in my prayers.
We had arrived around noon, and had been shown to my room where an elderly lady lay in the other bed surrounded by her relatives. I hung up my coat and sat on the plastic chair looking blindly out the window, waiting for the doctor. The now-familiar routines were followed with paperwork, blood test, tagging... but I could see the wall coming up fast and I was finally certain that I could not get over it this time.
By two pm my nose was pressing up against it and I cracked. I told my friend that I did not want to do the trade. It just wasn't a good enough deal. They would not conduct this horror on me just for a roll of the dice that might or might not result in a few more years of the same life I'd already had enough of a dozen times over.
"If all it's going to be is more of this, and in that condition, then no." I got up, heading for the nurse's station: "I'll just go tell them I'm going home."
I had my coat on and was pulling on my shoes, throwing things into my bag, trying to stay calm enough to explain that no, I would not, could not do this horrifying thing.
How could I trade who and what I am at so deep a level for something as cheap and lousy as a few more years? Why should I go to such lengths to extend a life that has rarely failed to disappoint? What could I possibly imagine I could still hope to have out of it at this stage?
It has been, shall we say, a strange few days and much of it spent in a cloud of morphine-induced confusion and on Saturday evening an unexpected and frightening reaction to one of the other pain drugs. But now that it is over, I have come to a kind of island of quiet. Not peace, exactly, but at least quiet, enough to wait through, because now we have to wait again.
What did I learn about myself in this odd, dream-like week? I learned that I almost fear life more than death by cancer. Which I think is not uncommon for people of our time.
Somewhere in the middle of all the haze and confusion, I remember taking a phone call. On Saturday afternoon, I commented that I was looking forward to lunch because the Gemelli does pretty good fish for lunch on Fridays. I had lost a whole day, but during that dream-sequence Friday, another odd thing occurred.
I really have little clear memory of the day after Thursday's surgery. I know I lay still, having been tucked by my friend carefully around with soft pillows to keep me from moving in the night. I looked up to see the nurse approaching with a cordless telephone held out towards me. She said something in Italian that I was certainly in no condition to understand. All I heard was "Canada". Were my employers calling to see how I was doing? I took the phone and a crackly old-fashioned operator's voice said in Italian, "Wait please for an international connection," and the next voice I heard was my father's.
I don't remember much of what I said. He asked me how long it had been since we talked and I think I said, "About 30 years." He told me that he was sorry and that he hoped I would get better and would I let him know how things went. He said he has prostate cancer. I remember asking what stage and he said, "Intermediate". He's being prepared for chemotherapy in the spring and is "optimistic". He asked me how long I'd lived in Italy, and what was I doing and was I enjoying it?
It was not long before I could no longer make any sense and the nurse standing over me could see that I was distressed. I told my father that I could not talk now but that I would send him a note telling him the outcome of the surgery. I can't remember what he said after that, but the nurse took the phone gently away and said many things in Italian that I understood even without knowing the words. "It was my father. It has been thirty years." She looked shocked, but stroked my head and told me not to cry. "Tranquila, tranquila..."
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