(posted by Bob)
Everyone forgets something—a name, an address, maybe your glasses—you feel silly. When you’re an author speaking at a library and you can’t read the opening paragraph of your own mystery novel, you really hate that one.
For me it took only ten days for a life of language to be gone. Lucky for me, like most “writers”, I had a day job: I worked on an armored car. Turned out I couldn’t read there, either. Linda, my wife, hauled me off to her doctor—I didn’t have one—and the doctor sent me to the emergency department. I had cancer.
In that part of my brain where I read and write, a mass had grown to the size of a golf ball. It was called a glioblastoma multiforme. The CT scan and MRI showed a round, white circle with a large, black, necrotic center. Grim faces all around.
The previous day I had delivered hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash. Today I was delivered to a hospital room on a gurney. Linda rounded up my sons and they all marched in in deathly cadence. I had my sons break out a deck of cards to lighten the heavy lead in the air.
That was Wednesday. A doctor stopped by to see what I looked like with hair. He gave me a thin run-down of the situation and had the nurses serve up heavy doses of pills and injections. The surgeon would study my pictures and in the morning explain the plan of attack. I was happy that there was anything to plan.
Thursday, in the morning, we learned surgery would not be done until early the following Monday. In the meantime, monster doses of steroids brought the swelling in my brain down, but sent my blood sugar skyrocketing. As a type II diabetic, I had never needed insulin. I needed it now. But I had four days to spend with Linda and my sons.
Monday came, and nothing took off as planned; we got moved to the afternoon slot. Linda and my sons passed the morning grimly, and in the afternoon, they followed my bed out to the elevator looking as if I were going to a firing squad.
Downstairs I got a central line and fresh CT scan. They turned up the juice and I was off to la-la land. They had my skull open for five hours and cut a hole big enough to search for a gerbil. Good to be asleep.
On Tuesday an earthquake shook Richmond, Virginia. A five on the Richter scale, and I missed it all.
Time became lost. All I knew was the faint light of early morning. I had no idea–where was I? I felt warm—good—cold would be bad news. I could barely move. I knew myself. Don’t panic. Just think.
…Nope. Didn’t have a name.
Light crept around me like a strange, still sandstorm. I could feel no wind, but I was lost in a quiet brownout. I couldn’t see any details or stand up. Something wrapped around my arms and legs.
Time passed. I was wearing clothing. I could feel it on my arms and legs, chose it to be my work uniform. Dressed like that, people would notice me. Still hadn’t a clue where I was. I could turn to my left and right. I set out to find someone.
My eyes were open, but I could see nothing—just the brownout, the blowing sand I couldn’t feel. I walked and walked, I didn’t know how long.
I could walk no farther; something unknown ensnared my arms and legs. I said, “Just tell me my name.” No sound came out. I didn’t like that.
I still couldn’t make anything out in the amber light. But my arms and legs had purchase again and I was off. Someone would know me. I got hung up and loose again many times, always looking, always searching, for someone who could tell me my name.
Finally, a voice said, “Mr. Bailey, we are going to…” I missed the rest because of, “Mr. Bailey.” Bob Bailey. Of course, how could I forget?
Turned out that I was in the ICU, in bed, wearing a hospital gown. A nurse unwrapped wrist restraints that tied me to the bed. My arms were black and blue. The nurse said she had had to wrestle for the entire day just to keep me in the bed. “Where on earth were you going?” she said.
“I was going to visit my customers,” I said.
The nurse shook her head and gave me half a dozen cards. “They all left you cards.”
I opened the cards one at a time, carefully, and realized that I had no idea what I was looking at, but that is another story. In the meantime the gerbil running in the squirrel cage in my skull was watching all the Art Hardin mysteries in my head.
**
Glioblastoma is one of the most swiftly fatal cancers known. But, really, we all have only one day, the same day: this one. Glioblastoma doesn’t hate you, and I don’t hate it back. It just is. We’re on a journey together.
I’m taking it day by day, through some pretty bizarre experiences.