(posted by Linda)
I was supposed to take my great aunt and my handicapped cousin out to lunch that day for my cousin’s fifty-eighth birthday. (The great aunt and cousin are a tale all by themselves. I have been responsible for their care for the past two and a half years. Ten years ago Aunt Fran took them out for my cousin’s birthday. They got in a fight and Aunt Fran got so upset she went home and had a massive stroke and was disabled and aphasic for the rest of her life. Can you maybe see some kind of hex associated with August 17th, here?)
When Bob asks me to go with him to his doctor’s appointment, that tells me he must be really worried. Bob never asks me to go to doctor’s appointments; he really doesn’t go as often as he might himself.
We’d just driven this cute little ’04 six cylinder Mustang convertible home a few days before. We spent the night before the appointment cruising to Sonic with the top down and scarfing burgers and fries. But that “Tomorrow might really be bad” feeling was hanging over us all evening.
The new St. Francis hospital here is dark. On the outside it’s imposing, with columns and flowers and fountains and a fancy brick driveway with valet parking. When you walk inside, it’s no less imposing, with its tall ceilings and shiny floors—but mostly it’s dark. Dark, marbled walls, dark shiny floors. I felt like I was walking into a cave.
We found our way to Dr. Taylor’s new office on the third floor. Dr. Taylor used to be busy enough to need a full-time nurse practitioner, but the recession has pushed her into consolidating with this new practice here. As we walk in I am relieved to see some of the same smiling faces behind the reception desk and the same friendly nurse I remember. At least these people haven’t lost their jobs.
Bob thinks his problems might be a side effect of a new generic for diabetes that X Medical Practice put him on a few weeks ago when all this started. He’s also been worried that perhaps he has Alzheimer’s. As a veterinarian, I know that this is unlikely. Based on the changes I’ve seen just in the past two days, there is no way Alzheimer’s would progress this fast. I am afraid my husband has had a stroke.
You can’t help but sit there, in the exam room waiting for the doctor, and wonder what this will mean for your future. Bob is halfway through his fourth book, one he’s been struggling for years to have the time and leisure to write. It’s an ambitious project, with all new characters who take turns telling each successive chapter in the first person. Will he be able to finish it? Can he still be happy if he can’t? I think about our prospects of being able to afford more medication when just glucose test strips already cost so much. Surely Bob will have to stop smoking. (How am I going to swing that one?)
A human neuro exam is interesting to watch when you already know how to perform one on a small animal. I sit back and take mental notes in case I ever find myself trying to decide whether to call an ambulance at three AM. Oriented to person, place, and thing. Cranial nerves okay. Normal and equal strength and sensation in all four limbs. Able to walk a straight line, heel to toe. Good coordination on both sides—Dr. Taylor has Bob stretch his index fingers out in front of him and touch his nose repeatedly.
All the while she is chatting with him, and I am counting the mishmashed and fumbled-for words. Bob is telling her about his writing career. When this person who proudly recites his awards and award nominations to passers-by at book signings, many times an hour, fumbles for them in the exam room, it’s an ominous message: No, you weren’t imagining this. Yes, he really needs to be here. Yes, this is really bad.
“Well, this looks serious,” Dr. Taylor tells us at the conclusion of her exam. “You’ve got a left temporal lobe lesion—that’s close to where the speech area is. That’s why you’re having trouble remembering words. I’m thinking you’ve probably had a stroke. You need to go straight downstairs to the emergency department, and we’re going to call down and let them know you’re coming.”
If it is a stroke, there’s a good chance my husband’s problems may be permanent, or even get worse. As we ride downstairs in the elevator, I reach out and hold his hand. “I had a feeling they were going to have to keep me,” he says. I am thinking: Is this going to get even worse? What if I have to stay home and take care of him? I can’t afford to quit my job. And, How are we going to pay for this? I try not to think about the other things this could be. The word “lesion” conjures all sorts of unpleasant memories of things in the “rare” column in our neuro books back in the office, things no one wants. Please, just a stroke, I think. That, we could possibly deal with.
When you don’t have to wait forever in an emergency room, there are only two reasons: One, they’re having a slow day, or, two, they’re really worried about you. We’re tucked away in Exam Room 13, and Bob is trundled off for first a CT scan, then an MRI. We are waiting for the transport to the MRI when a serious-looking physician’s assistant motions me out of the room.
I’ve given bad medical news a million times myself. There’s a reason this man doesn’t want to talk to me in front of my husband. This is worse than a stroke.
“We’re seeing a mass lesion on the CT scan,” he tells me. “We’re thinking this is probably a tumor.”
A hot flush rushes over me and cold tingles chill my arms. All the things we’d had planned for the future careen through my head: A short, cheap beach getaway next month. Finishing our novels and starting rewrites on a screenplay we’d written together. Less time on the aunt and cousin, more time for each other. In less than half a second, all those everyday, ordinary, normal things are gone, and death is a real possibility. I glance down the hall toward Room 13, where Bob doesn’t know all this yet.
He’s still lying there, thinking it’s a mild stroke or some strange drug reaction. Overnight at the hospital, home in a few days. It’s clear who’s supposed to tell him.
There’s a moment where the floor is dissolving under me and my insides shudder like leaves in the rain. I can give bad news; I’ve been doing it for eighteen years. But he was going to finish his novel. But—we haven’t even been married five years yet.
I look up at the PA. “Damn it,” I snap the words out. “I was so hoping for a stroke.”
He blinks at me. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard anybody say that.”