Death came calling the other day, a soft tentative knock from the other side so as to not disturb the small children, or anyone else but me, and it did; a soft ripple across the pond, subtle but distinctly sharp, a shiver when I saw the value, and I knew it was not good. Not good at all. WBCs over 18,000, but I wasn’t sick, not like that. I was sick, my heart. Atrial fibrillation come back, but that is not an infection, no reason for the increase in white blood cells, especially greater than 80% lymphocytes. There’s only two things that means, a virus, or cancer, and did I say I wasn’t sick? Which means that the reality outside of the current Schrödinger wave function of uncertainty was most likely the latter and I found that I was much more comfortable in my state of relative superposition of quantum indeterminacy where I was half cancer free, like the half alive half dead cat inside the box with the vial of poison in Schrödinger’s famous thought experiment, and I was in no rush to collapse my wave function to cancer with the observation of the observer, whoever the observer were to be; thus, it was with some surprise Dr. X responded to me when we crossed paths in the doctor’s lounge towards the end of the day, “I suppose you saw your results on the portal,” he said, and I said that I had not.
“No, C (using his first name), I didn’t look.” I didn’t explain my preference for my indeterminate quantum smear of reality of have cancer/do not have cancer–not sure he would know what I was talking about, but I did add with what I think sounded like a cool wry chuckle, “Actually, C, I wasn’t in a hurry to know that I have cancer.”
“Oh,” raised eyebrows, embarrassed laugh, “well, does look concerning for possible CLL,” reassuring smile, good eye contact, “you know how large a differential there is with high white counts…”
I didn’t say that no there wasn’t a large differential, just a virus of which, granted, there are many, but the only other thing being blood cancer; instead I smiled back reassuringly, also with good eye contact as we are both good physicians, and said, “Yeah, I know. Thanks for all your attention and for stopping by to see me in the ER.”
“We can order flow cytometry.” I wasn’t too sure what this was as I’d never ordered it so I just nodded. I must have looked especially ignorant as he added, “It’s just a blood test.”
I had the blood test two days later. It was a send out. I was back in the box, a little smaller box of a less uncertainty, but still a box in which I was a cat with some percentage of a chance of not having cancer, the bottle of poison not yet broken by the hammer not yet fallen. I told myself I would not open the box; rather, I would leave the task to the oncologist I would be seeing, also a friend, on the Wednesday after Father’s Day. Father’s Day is always on a Sunday and on Saturday we went to the beach, my wife, son and daughter and 2yo granddaughter. Our other son and his wife met us there later in the day. I took a bunch of pictures of the granddaughter in the sand, in the water, with a bucket and shovel, wearing my cap backwards. So cute. A beautiful day. When we got home we were both tired, as tired as the close approximation of a two-year-old and large body of water tends to make one, so we retired to two lounge chairs arranged in parallel, under the umbrella on the deck, in the distance a sliver of Lake Michigan blue twinkling. After about two minutes I pulled out my phone to check my emails and saw the subject line of “New Portal results to view.”
I was alone, but it didn’t feel right. Was I being a coward by not looking? Was not looking going to change the outcome, like maybe if I went to confession or prayed really hard first that that might change things? I felt weak, timid, less strong than when I knew the box was locked, but now I had the key to open the box. Was the vial of poison inside broken, the cat that was me infected with cancer, or was the vial intact and all I had was a virus?
Sue walked out with some water and laid down next to me. I waited a bit, then, “Some lab results are back.”
“What are they?” Her voice was soft, afraid. I clicked on the results.
I read the results of the flow cytometry and saw that they were read by Dr. Y, another friend of many years. I heard sound of a hammer striking glass in a tinkling crash. “It looks like I have Chronic Lymphatic Leukemia.”
“Did you know already?” I could hear the hint of faint reproach that I may have been keeping it a secret.
“I suspected, but didn’t know these results until just now.”
I saw the relief in her eyes and I was glad I unlocked my box with her by my side. It was something to be shared when the sharee is a part of you as is wont to occur after forty-four years of comingled thoughts, joys and sorrows, agonies and ecstasies. I was calm, cool as a cucumber I think the saying is, perhaps equally surprised as she at my equanimity. I suppose I’d already worked through all that and all in my googling of this and that, of CLL prognosis, survival and the terminal stages thereof. I knew that survival could mean decades, two to twenty years depending on stage and a bunch of other things. At a soon to be sixty-two, with reasonable odds, that meant eighty, about ten years less than I had been planning on given my family history and lifestyle habits of weight control and obsessive exercise and not smoking or generally doing stupid things, having quit those things after about fifty.
So, eighty–IF. If a lot of things; so, back in the box I go, but I wonder if that is such a bad place as we are all in the box, half alive, half dead already from the standpoint that it is inevitable, it coming sooner to some than to others. Why should I be so special as to be one of the others rather than one of the some?
And then I think of Socrates and his drink of Hemlock, and why he was not afraid of death, and on Father’s Day, I understood when I saw the light in church before I lost consciousness. There was no pain. I felt extremely weak, stood for the Procession of Faith after the homily but then slouched forward then sat back down, but it started before I stood, the light, the brightness, so bright that I couldn’t see well, Sue’s face next to me, staring, eyes wide, her voice, “Call 911,” then two people on either side of me half carrying me as my legs moved down the aisle past all the faces of all the regulars I see every Sunday.
I wouldn’t say I had enough time to think: Am I dying? Is this it? I didn’t feal fear, only puzzlement then nothing until the something of almost floating down the aisle, so strongly did the hands hold me aloft, like I could have lifted me feet and still kept moving. In my mind, back online, I got what Socrates meant about death being like a deep dreamless sleep (or the other thing). That’s what it felt like, other than the light, like falling asleep, which is nothing to fear. And if it’s the other thing (of Socrates–Relocation of the soul) which means Heaven, it is something to welcome, to embrace, to go running towards with open arms. Of course there are many ways to “fall into that deep dreamless sleep” or to “relocate,” many if not most being much more unpleasant comes to mind, as St. Steven being stoned at the Lion’s Gate, or St. Peter being crucified upside down, or any other martyred death; or William Wallace being drawn and quartered in the public square, so, not that I am a saint (far far from) or a freedom fighter or soldier to suffer those painful passings is not to say that there couldn’t still be something equally unpleasant, like this guy just drinking his coffee in the yard of his house being built in Arizona the other day. Bam. A bear ate him. Thing is, even though the two Socratic options are not to be feared, getting there may be and then the fear of missing all that comes after in the world and lives of your loves of which you once were an integral part of the fabric thereof. So. Yes. I’d rather live as long as possible.