Einstein Strikes Back!

A little over a week into our new countdown clock existence and both everything and nothing has changed. In practical terms, our days are nearly identical to what they were prior to all this business: doctor appointments, medication schedules, pain management, and so on. But there have been changes, mostly incremental but they all speak to the stark new landscape we are now negotiating.

We met with both of our main doctors last week, Dr. Sherman and Dr. Moini, and Karen let them know that she was done with treatment. They both accepted and understood this in the most unremarkable way possible. While I had feared that Sherman would push back forcefully against Karen's decision to try to grab the least objectionable demise she could given her new diagnosis, he was fully supportive. The ease with which he--and Moini and all the chemo nurses and, frankly, our family members--accepted Karen's acceptance of  this journey's imminent end spoke volumes about how dire the situation has become and how appropriate this choice is in light of it. As gun-shy as I was about possibly having to defend Karen's decision, there was a hope in the back of my mind that Sherman or someone would stop it, that there was something more to do, something that wouldn't, well, hurt.

But that didn't happen. Rather, all of our medical personnel not only accepted our transition to an end game posture, they talked about it as a good thing. They, like Karen, focused on what is to be gained: a handful of weeks spent with her kids, her dogs, her n'er-do-well spouse, and whatever family could make the trip out over the next few weeks. Every one of them spoke of this as if it were an excellent outcome. And it probably is, all things considered, but it is challenging to be as upbeat about it as they were.

As for the aforementioned changes, the bulk of them are subtle though a handful (I had to rent a wheelchair last week because Karen doesn't have the strength to walk more than a few dozen steps at a time) are a smidge more in your face. More often than not, the inevitable conclusion of our cancer cruise finds subtle new ways to insinuate itself into our lives--three years in and we still get blindsided in fresh and unexpected ways. For instance, the other day I was trying to clear some space on our jam-packed DVR and there was a pile of Masters of Sex episodes (basically, the entire current season) gobbling up a meaty slab of storage space. This has been a show we always get around to, not something we watch right away, i.e. it's no Game of Thrones. My deliberations about what to do with the lot was jarred by a wholly unexpected criterion that slipped in sideways: all things considered, there was no way we were going to watch these. Ever. My stomach knotted and my eyes watered with the realization. And then I deleted the lot of them so I wouldn't have to look at them and think about it again.

Karen's experience, as she's described it, is a lot like the end of a Get Smart episode, with a series of doors slamming shut behind her, relentlessly closing off experiences and hopes and dreams and small inconsequential daily activities that seem so much more consequential now. Every day there is a sense of something else being lost forever without any snazzy shoe phones to help take the sting out. If our experience with cancer has been defined by anything, it has been defined by the way the disease has inexorably taken a series of things away from us. It is a litany of loss, with the disease ruthlessly stripping away the things large and small that, in aggregate, help define a life, a person. There are few lasting victories.

But there are some. The first thing we lost to cancer was Einstein on the Beach, a four and a half hour minimalist opera without an intermission that that is just as challenging to see as it sounds. Three years ago, prior to Karen's diagnosis, I got us tickets and we were both incredibly excited to see it. But then Karen developed the "pneumonia" that we would find out in a month was cancer and, long story short, she couldn't make it and I went alone. Denied the opportunity to share and discuss it with her, it was almost as if it didn't happen.

Miranda has turned that around. With no DVDs or anything available in North America, Miranda (unbidden and on her own volition) somehow contacted Philip Glass' agent and, another long story short, wound up corresponding with a French director who had been working on a documentary of the production. He burned her a copy and they arrived mid-week. So fuck you, cancer, we're taking that one back.

We watched the first of the three discs already.

It is glorious.