The cleaning frenzy

This morning I found myself digging deep into one of our kitchen cabinets, examining items--sorting, throwing, saving-- before scrubbing it down. While not something I do often, when the mood hits, watch out. With daytime T.V. background noise (no, not the stock market) I threw away a half eaten box of cookies so rich I could not bring myself to indulge in them. Then there was a baggie of some chocolate candy left over from my best daughter-in-law in the world’s visit in May. (Not that I don’t have my private stash hidden in another place.) Stale partial bags of nuts and some rock hard raisin pebbles that had seen better days—gone. After the spray-down with the all-natural cleaner, it was neat, almost empty and awaiting a Whole Foods run.

Feeling virtuous, I began to wonder what brought on this sudden urge to clean. Usually the impulse comes during a transition—a change of season, a child moving out, finishing one of my interim ministry calls. Perhaps I was just feeling the let down from the departure of my BFF, Sue, and her husband who had visited for a week. Missing her terribly with her life now based in Florida and mine in Boston could easily have triggered a need to put order into unsettled part of my life.

Then it hit me; the check-up. Next Monday we are meeting Melanie in New York for her next visit at Sloan Kettering Hospital. If there is one thing I have learned over the last seven years, it is that the week preceeding a check-up for Melanie is fraught with emotional landmines lurking about. Without realizing why, I get moody and a bit testy.  Like a summer storm cloud gradually forming on the horizon, I am barely aware of its existence until it gets closer.  Without even realizing it, I find myself reaching for an umbrella or even foul weather gear just in case.  

Maybe it goes back to thinking if I only I had been more observant, noticing those clouds forming nine or ten years ago I would have seen the tsunami bearing down on Melanie and protected her. (Doctors have told us that given her advance stage when diagnosed, her cancer had been growing for at least eight years)  If caught earlier, she might have been spared a lifetime of monitoring and treatment. Most days those regrets stay hidden like those rock raisins in my cabinet, but just when it seems I have disposed of them once and for all, they resurface triggering some pretty unproductive thinking.

 

So while excited to see Melanie for the first time since her wedding, it means facing (again) this love/ hate relationship with her check-ups.  Always hoping for the “good news” scenario--no changes in scans and steady blood work--for seven years we have been making this trek with fingers crossed and varying luck.

You might have noticed I keep using the word “we” because that is one of the ways we have chosen to support Melanie. When it comes to cancer, Melanie moves with an entourage. As her parents and her brother and SIL, it is a promise we made her seven years ago, and it is one that Ben has embraced with such love it brings tears to my eyes. Although it is Melanie’s life and body impacted, she does not do cancer alone.

After so many years she, and we, know the drill well. Melanie flies to NY while Chris and I hop the Acela from Boston. Melanie and I each carry trusty little notebooks, listing her blood numbers for the past seven years This weekend Melanie is attending the wedding of a high school friend first, so for us it will be a turn around trip as she is anxious to get home to fabulous Ben before heading to the wilderness later next week.  The first part of the day Melanie will spend running from place to place getting whatever scan has been ordered  (an ultrasound and every year or so a CT scan), checking with the business office to update her new name, and grabbing lunch before heading to the Sloan on the Upper East Side.

Entering Dr. T’s office is always a bit of a shock—the waiting room bursting with thirty or more mostly silent older folks in various stages of health-- a sober reminder that this is generally not a young person’s disease. Even though thyroid cancer is the fastest growing cancer in young women, we rarely encounter another patient under fifty. It is not a place my vibrant daughter should belong—yet she does. Although Dr. T runs a pretty tight ship, the wait feels tediously long,

When called, Melanie leads the entourage to the barren examination room— for years, the same one--with a window overlooking a park across the street. Again we wait. The rest of the appointment is teaching hospital routine with first a research fellow asking questions about medications and Melanie’s general health—much of the same material Dr. T will cover when he comes in.  Sometimes information is pick up in that session, but our real questions wait for Dr. T who appears a few moments later carrying the results of her scan and a smile that lights up the room no matter what he is holding in his hand. Besides the fact that he is a first rate doctor, his demeanor, attention to Melanie, agility with any question we have, and hearty laugh remind us that Melanie is in the most capable, caring hands possible. This is the man who tells her each visit that it is her job to live life, and his to tell her when she needs to take a moment to deal with her cancer.

In so many respects, she is lucky. She has choices and resources unavailable to far too many cancer survivors, and unlike many other cancers, even though hers is metastatic, thyroid cancer grows and spreads slowly. Once initially treated, there is generally not the urgency to treat found in many cancers; Melanie can plans the timing if treatment is required.

The initial chitchat delays the news we really are anxious to hear. Is there anything new on the scan? The other news involving a blood marker must wait for ten days-- a huge disadvantage to not living locally, since the test takes a week to ten days to process. Questions are asked and answered; then it is all over.  Perhaps twenty minutes has elapsed with the doctor. All that is left is for Melanie to make her next appointment, get blood drawn, and for us to put our head’s together reconstructing the nuances of any new information we might have gleaned and asking each other if we heard the same things. It is amazing how often that is not the case.

It is all surreal. No matter what has been learned, only twenty minutes have lapsed. That is it. Too soon it is time to leave each other. Hugging, squeezing extra tight for good measure, we will say goodbye with storm clouds or crystal clear skies following us even as we go in opposite directions. Home again, her life and ours will resume, hopefully with my kitchen cabinets, save one, remaining in their familiar disarray for a bit longer.