The Unwinding of the Miracle - Julie Yip-Williams Page 0,31

would pull out a lamp from her purse, but alas, that did not happen. He gave me instructions to go to an herbal pharmacy in Chinatown (the only one he trusts, as they’ve been around for forty years and are known for sourcing high-quality herbs). When I was little, my mother would bring home mysterious brown herbs wrapped in pink butcher paper, dump them in a pot, and cook them for hours. Then she’d force down the bitter black tea resulting from that brew. Fortunately, it’s thirty years later, and now herbal pharmacies have machines that brew teas and package them into vacuum pouches that are easy to use. I am grateful to not have to brew teas for hours as my mother did, because if I’d had to, I might not have ever embarked on this little adventure.

The day after our meeting, Dr. G.W. sent me the list of herbs that would make up my tea:

Poria

Dioscorea

Atractylodes

Codonopsis

Astragalus

Cinnamon twig

Mulberry twig

Perilla leaf

Ophiopogon tuber

Schisandra

Peony

Ligustrum

Achyranthes

Eucommia bark

Cornus

Lycium fruit

Chih-ko

Magnolia bark

Lo hon fruit

Tangerine peel

I forwarded the list to my oncologist. He approved. I told Dr. G.W. to place the order with the herbal pharmacy, and I went to pick up the tea. Amid the open-air markets of fruits and vegetables and smelly fish and the restaurants with the roasted ducks and chickens hanging in their windows sits the uncrowded herbal pharmacy. The store looks as reputable and clean as a store in New York’s Chinatown can be, with glass display cases under fluorescent lights filled with creams, ointments, and oils, and shelves lined with hundreds of giant glass jars containing things like black jujubes, honeyed dates, lo han guo, and all the other manner of fruit, tree bark, leaves, fungi, roots, and derivatives thereof that could possibly be in the world. One of the teenagers working behind the counter went into the back room to retrieve my freshly brewed teas, all neatly packed in four-ounce clear plastic pouches. The tea was so newly made that it was almost too hot to handle. I authorized a $150 charge on my credit card for a sixteen-day supply and walked out the door. (Credit card acceptance in Chinatown is also a good sign of legitimacy.) Dr. G.W. will reassess the herbal formula at the end of that period to determine if there are any necessary adjustments. My job is to drink the stuff twice a day and to keep him informed via email about how my body is reacting.

Bottoms up!

12

The Surly Bonds of Earth

An interesting quirk of having a disease is that most of your friends from diagnosis on also have the same disease. Which means that pretty soon, your friends start to die.

The first week of 2014 brought this part of the experience home, vividly. I celebrated my thirty-eighth birthday, observed the six-month anniversary of my diagnosis, and learned of the cancer-related deaths of two individuals and the impending death of another. One of the dead was a veritable celebrity in the colorectal cancer community, and the other I had known and worked with shortly before my own diagnosis.

John was a partner at my law firm, a distinguished-looking man in his mid-fifties who, despite having lived all over the world practicing law, hadn’t managed to rid himself of his midwestern accent. I didn’t know him as well as I knew many other partners of the firm, but I was briefly assigned to work on a transaction with him only last June, just as I was first experiencing symptoms. He was one of those partners who was always involved, who actually read the documents and called to check on the status of various aspects of the deal. Of course, I was going on vacation to L.A. in early July, so John decided to replace me with another associate.

Little did either of us know then that deadly tumors were thriving in both of our bodies. In early December, I learned that John had just been diagnosed with brain cancer and the prognosis was grim. And then, two months later, he was dead. It took me two months just to begin processing the fact that I had cancer. He didn’t even have a chance to put up a fight.

John passed away the day after Gloria died of colon cancer–related complications. I didn’t know Gloria personally, but I read her entire blog, which chronicled her three-and-a-half-year battle, when I was first diagnosed. She had a loud voice in the colorectal cancer community, since she’d started her own nonprofit to raise money