March 16, Falling Into Walls

 

Last night, Peggy fell into walls and doors when she awakened to use the bathroom. She didn’t call for help; she instead tried to fall quietly so she wouldn’t awaken me. So it is that we each try to protect the other, but last night was a bad time for her to do so. Side effects from chemo can develop even after chemo is stopped and have been known to become permanent. Peggy and I agree that death would be preferable to taking another dose of the poison she took two weeks ago. I would even fear for her life if she tried to endure it, so I can but be grateful that surgery offers another option.

It is now late afternoon, and she remains dizzy; can’t stop trembling; needs help walking; has vomited coffee-colored liquid; is too sick and exhausted to stay out of bed; and has only eaten a quarter serving of fruit all day. She has a phone number that her oncologist ordered her to call about such problems, but she refuses to call, partly because she is scheduled to have an infusion to strengthen her bones on Tuesday in preparation for surgery, and she’s afraid that her oncologist will cancel it if he knows how sick she is. I have her medical power of attorney, so I could call on her behalf, but the situation isn’t so bad that I feel that I must, plus I share her concern about the infusion. 

Both of us felt like idiots when we arrived at her new doctor’s office an hour late. When she called to tell her doctor that we would be late, the woman she spoke with couldn’t have been nicer. Anytime one calls a doctor in America, the person who answers the phone asks for full name and birthdate, so the woman probably surmised that age had made Peggy and me rather stupid. This is a common assumption, but the fact is that illness (I have my own problems that I haven’t mentioned), stress, and medications (I take narcotics and combine various types of sleeping pills) is a far greater challenge to our intelligence than age.

I concluded from our difficulty in finding the doctor’s office that I had failed Peggy. After all, she is the one who has cancer and is sick from chemo, so I should have known how to get there ahead of time. In my defense is the fact that my thoughts move as if in slow motion, and the nightmare that has become our normality has lessened my ability to comprehend and concentrate. Even so, I failed her repeatedly by not taking the time to double check that we had the proper paperwork; by not knowing how to get there in advance; and by not pulling to the side of the highway to look the address up for myself when what Peggy told me didn’t sound right. 

While it is true that Peggy is more intelligent than I in many ways, it is also true that she is sick from cancer; is being poisoned by chemo; and has never been good with maps or computers—including I-Phones. I love maps, and I’m good enough with computers that I haven’t needed technical guidance since the Dos-prompt days. Earlier today, she and I programmed her phone to give verbal navigation instructions, a job that took under five minutes. She had horrified me by seriously proposing that she ask a friend’s grandson to do it for her, so I don’t know if she would have undertaken the job without my help, although she could have easily done it.

My inability to verbalize her new doctor’s name so that the women at the first clinic could understand what I was saying added to the feeling of inadequacy that a poor speaking ability has plagued me with since childhood when I stuttered and couldn’t pronounce my own name because three of the six letters in Lowell is a letter than I couldn’t say. Then, five years ago, I was diagnosed with a condition called spasmodic dysphonia, which is worse in the morning. I had so much trouble in that clinic that I couldn’t even understandably spell the word I was trying to say. 

I later envied Peggy’s new surgeon because he spoke and moved with a self-confidence that I experienced in early and mid adulthood, but began to lose with age. Then, ten months ago, came Peggy’s illness, and the bottom has been falling out of my—and her—intelligence ever since. As my brother said, “We all draw the short straw at some point.” 

People sometimes tell us that we’re brave. I don’t know how Peggy feels about hearing this, but I don’t feel brave; I feel like a rat who is running frantically through a maze that has no exit.