continued from chapter 6: part 5
I realize now that Doctor Roberts was just marking time until we could see the oncologist but at the time he seemed as puzzled as we were about what should be done next. All he had to do was keep monitoring until the forthcoming appointment at Princess Margaret Hospital.
He got it in his head at our next meeting that he didn’t have enough information about the placement of the liver spots, although the surgeon’s letter to him, which he read out loud to us, seemed clear enough.
We were like lambs led to the slaughter. He ordered a venogram, a procedure to be
done in the Emergency Department on an outpatient basis. Dye is inserted in a groin artery and when the dye reaches the liver, it is Ex-Rayed.
On the day, Hal was given a tranquillizer and I sat across the hall from the procedures room, where he was taken.
Once, the door was opened, and I saw him lying on the table covered by a blood-soaked sheet. Arteries tend to gush. He was still woozy but cheerful when he was wheeled out on the stretcher. He was instructed to lie still for a couple of hours to be sure the bleeding wouldn’t resume again. The doctor came in and brought the plates with him and we looked at the tumors. They looked like bull eyes. So, now he agreed with the man who had seen the tumors first hand; the tumors were indeed too spread out to be successfully removed. And it was really necessary to put Hal through this exercise to give this temporary doctor his first-hand view?
Ironically, when Hal finally moved on to the next doctor, this Ex-Ray was lost.
continued in chapter 6: part 7
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