Continued from chapter 1, part 12
At last we could go home. Hal's hair was shaggy, he was ghostly pale and his clothes hung from his gaunt frame. He looked wonderful to me and his attitude was upbeat. He behaved the way he would for the remaining year of his life, like a well man with an inconvenient health problem.
He asked for a long-way drive home to see the neighborhood and watch people walking by on the street and he grinned with delight when I found something quite rare, a parking spot in front of our house.
Hephzibah was glad to see him. She was our nineteen-year old part Persian, part Angora cat who was sinking into senility and had it fixed in her mind that our new broadloom was her litter box. After nineteen years, it was hard to discuss “putting her down,” especially when we were now dealing with a life-threatening illness. She and Hal were such good pals that she’d even settle down to wait or him outside the bathroom door.
After the two pals had a good chance to say hello, I took Hal’s hand and led him upstairs where the bed covers were turned back and his pajamas paid out.
He gave me a stony stare.
“I can tell by the look of determination that you have in mind treating me like an invalid,” he muttered, “go find another hobby.”
He headed down the hall to his study to read his mail and I went down stairs to make him a calorie-laden milk shake.
For the first couple of days, we rambled about the house like two marbles in a shoebox, getting in one another’s way and not knowing what to do next. He was protective of his wound and walked about slowly. If it had been like old times, he would have been working at his computer and I would have been on the third floor working on mine.
We were anxious about his future appointment with Dr. Beam, the surgeon, to make sure the wound was continuing to heal and after that Hal was to be turned over to an Oncologist at Princess Margaret, the cancer hospital. We had expected the turnover would have happened before he was discharged from the hospital and we couldn’t understand why everything was so casual. The surgeon had explained to us that the Oncologist was on vacation but still, shouldn’t someone be monitoring a man with cancer in his colon and liver? Why didn’t I telephone and ask? I still don’t know. Traces of that previous passive stance remained. I simply felt a constant nagging worry.
I can be more objective about these times now, and while I question whether our family doctor should have let him suffer so long without the intervention of a specialist, I'm more curious about the passive behavior we exhibited during that time. That simply wasn't our usual style. I don't recall, either, ever allowing myself to think that this condition might be cancer. If one of our children had these symptoms we would have been demanding some immediate answers; somehow we just did not believe this painful episode in our lives was serious. I suspect that a lot of people reading this went through the same experience.
I understand better now the way cancer works; we sought help as soon as Hal felt any symptoms but even then in his case the disease was too far along.
There isn't anyone to blame. Time and again when I talked about this with friends who had gone through this, each recounted tales of misdiagnosis. It simply isn't easy to identify.
We were just beginning to grasp the most important message we were to learn, that it just isn't enough to put your life into the hands of the doctor; you have to take control yourself. At first we had felt helpless, like puppets with an invisible person pulling the strings. We had felt sorrow, and then confusion and anger, and then we felt hope. I know the human mind can win over body symptoms and I know Hal made the rest of his life count because he focused entirely on living.
Those early rules we'd been raised by came into play. You face your obstacles and you clear them out of the way. We set out to do just that.
to be continued in chapter 2; part 2
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