eyeglasses. “Okay,” he said, his tone unchanged, nothing to read into at all, “here’s what we need to do. We need to get some blood work, we need to do some more tests, we should biopsy your breast lump, and we may need to do some other biopsies as well.”
“I’m sorry, doctor, but I thought we were worried about my spine and my bones.”
“Most cancers start somewhere else and they travel,” he said. “For example, it’s very uncommon to have liver cancer. Usually, cancer of the liver starts somewhere else, like in the breast.”
“So in this case, what you’re telling me is I have breast cancer that has spread to my bones?”
I thought I saw just a little bit of emotion then. He seemed to swallow especially hard before he answered. “That’s what we need to find out. We’re going to send you for a biopsy, we’re going to get a CAT scan of your chest and belly, and we’re going to do a bone scan. You’ll be back by the end of the week and we’ll go over the results.”
I could go on and on about the subsequent tests I took and the chalky fluid I drank and the Ambien-fueled nights that passed, but there isn’t really much point in any of that. By Friday I was back with Dr. Z and he was telling me, in a matter-of-fact tone, that I have breast cancer that has probably spread to my spine.
What was amazing about that moment was that I had no reaction whatsoever. You know how when you see someone in a courtroom be pronounced guilty and sentenced to life in prison, they don’t ever seem to scream or cry or even flinch? I’ve always wondered how they manage to remain so stoic, but now I understand. It is because they already know. Just as I did. I knew what Dr. Z was going to tell me before I set foot in the office.
“Are you saying I have a terminal disease?” I asked.
“What I’m saying is that you have a disease we cannot cure,” he said. I could tell he’d made this speech many times. “That does not mean we can’t treat it, we can often treat it for years, but based on what we know now this is not a disease that we can cure.”
I wanted to ask him how long I had but the words got stuck inside.
“You should know, Katherine,” he went on, “that miraculous progress is being made in research every year, every day, every hour. We will treat this, we will make this as comfortable as we can for you, we will see to it that you will live your life however you choose to, and we will be comforted by the fact that five years ago there was a lot less we could do for you than we can today. And by that, I mean that there is every reason to believe that next year there will be more we can do, and even more the following year. So that is the game we are playing.”
I closed my eyes and asked, “How much time do you think we have to play it?”
He smiled. “How’s your sense of humor?”
“Some people say it’s my best quality.”
“Okay, then I’ll tell you that if you are asking me when you are going to die, I will tell you that if I knew I would arrange right now to take that day off, because there’s a lot of paperwork involved. And then you’d smile—just as you are right now—and I’d tell you I’m not giving any thought to when you are going to die. The only thing either of us needs to be thinking about is how you’re going to live.”
So, Samantha, that is my story. I haven’t been back to see him yet. I will go, probably tomorrow or the next day. I just haven’t been able to manage it yet. I haven’t been able to do anything. I haven’t left my apartment, have hardly eaten, barely slept. I can’t really describe the way I feel. But I can tell you that I’m afraid I can’t do what the doctor is asking. Because I am so alone. I don’t have a husband, a boyfriend, a sister, or a priest. I can’t involve Maurice in this. He’s a wonderful man but he’s my driver, and I can’t put all of this on him. You can’t ask people who work for you to do things like this, because