What Happened, Part 2:

Friday, April 9 was my appointment with the hematologist and my flight to DC. Spike accompanied me and my luggage to my appointment with Dr. Weissmann, an enormously warm, down-to-earth, reassuring woman with a New York accent and an office filled with pictures of Lance Armstrong and her eight-year-old son. Within about half an hour, I was lying on my belly in an hospital gown (which Dr. Weissmann called a "johnny coat") for a bone marrow biopsy. Dr. Weissmann told me firmly that it wasn't going to hurt, but I was pretty damn scared. I'd read and heard descriptions of the procedure and it had generally been described as extremely painful.

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Lying on my stomach, I didn't see much, though Dr. Weissmann explained what she was doing as she went along. Spike watched, though, and gave me some details afterwards. I felt a sharp prick as the Novacaine was administered at my hip. Dr. Weissmann explained to Spike that the needle she was about to use was so frighteningly long because it had to get through a lot of flesh on some patients, but that little of its length would be necessary on me. I kept my eyes shut. I felt a strong but vague pressure as the needle went in. Then a strange, unpleasant sensation, quite distinct from pain, went all through my pelvis and left leg. That was the bone marrow being drawn out, and it was like nothing so much as really getting it hard on the funny bone.

The next procedure, getting a bone sample, was probably a little less intense for me, but had Spike putting her head between her legs for a while to keep from fainting. Apparently, the sight of the formidable Dr. Weissman putting most of her weight into corkscrewing an awl-like device into my hipbone was a little disconcerting.

Afterwards, Dr. Weissmann encouraged Spike and me to walk into Harvard Square and get some lunch while the lab ran its tests on the samples she'd extracted. Walking felt a little odd at first, but the sunlight and fresh air soon restored me, and we picked up sandwiches at Darwin. Ltd., a nifty sandwich shop a few blocks away.

We sat in a park by the river and ate. Over my cream cheese, salmon, caper, cucumber, tomato, and onion sandwich, I broke down into tears again, overwhelmed by fear of what I might be about to learn.

Back in Dr. Weissman's office, she cautiously told me her diagnosis, not certain, I think, how I would take it. Probably hairy-cell leukemia, she said, though she wouldn't be sure until a few days of lab tests. Leukemia's not a pretty word (okay, actually it kind of is, but its signficance and associations remove most of its charm), but I had been braced for it. Once she explained my prognosis and treatment options, I was elated. I was going to live! My eyes teared up once more--this time with relief. Could I still go down and visit my mother? Sure; my blood counts looked stable--the disease was progressing very slowly--but I should come back a day earlier.

We walked back to Harvard Square with my luggage, my legs still a little wobbly, but my spirits immensely high. There, I left a message with the friend Lotte was staying with, trying to cram all my news, all my relief, shouted over the sound of Harvard Square traffic, on that little answering machine tape an ocean away. I filled a prescription for a drug that fights uric acid in the blood. I didn't have elevated levels yet, but when the chemo started, the dying blood cells would produce uric acid in quantities that would otherwise destroy my liver. It was strangely comforting taking the first Allopurinol pill, feeling like I had begun my treatment already.

Right before walking down into the T station, I asked Spike to stop, and ducked into the T-Mobile store that was right there. For some months I had been resisting the temptation to pick up the camera add-on for my Hiptop. It seemed like a suitably frivolous purchase for a giddy moment. The first picture I took was from inside the store, to test it. This is the second.

(to be continued...eventually)

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