Happy Friday.  It looks like a snowy day is ready to break as I sit down to write.  Again this blog continues to described the back story to my first book River of January.  I did not set out to be a writer, but as many others , came to the craft from a place of difficulty.  Thanks for reading.  Hopefully, the manuscript  will become available in early 2014. . .

The man lay in bed writhing in agony.  Truly at a loss I kept repeating “what should I do, who should I call?”  Escalating the urgency of the moment, my husband leaned over the bed and vomited red Gatorade.  Or was it blood?  The contents on the rug were too similar in color to decide.  I hurriedly called the Boise tumor center for direction.  The answering triage nurse assured me that it was nothing but constipation, and that was the cause of his considerable pain.  I quickly located a feeding syringe in the kitchen and loaded it up with a liquid laxative, and we waited for the desired effect.

Chad’s body did not cooperate with the laxative, instead he was nearly screaming with pain.  My hands were splayed open and I raced around the bed fretting about what I needed to do.  He yelled “call Donny.” 

What was unusual about that idea is that Donny, our neighbor, is a retired plumber.  Unless he could use his snake and wrench, there wasn’t much our handy neighbor could do to help.  But that detail escaped me at that moment, and I did call Donny’s number.  He wasn’t there.

It was his wife who answered, and after I explained the emergency she responded, “I’m on my way.”

Rocking back and forth, Chad clearly had progressed toward delirium.  By the time the neighbor pulled into the driveway, his condition had significantly deteriorated.  She came in, took one look at him, picked up the phone and dialed 911.  “911!” Here?  In the woods?  Apparently so, because about a half hour later a huge rescue vehicle backed into the drive. 

Our little mountain home was quickly transformed into medical bedlam.  Medics stood over Chad’s bed, attaching a blood pressure cuff, poking in a line of saline into his arm, and asking him a blizzard of questions.  Other paramedics commenced to shove furniture out of the way navigating a white covered gurney into the house.  Watching the chaos I had enough presence of mind to understand my helplessness, and at that moment something broke inside of me.  It wasn’t physical like my husband’s–it was more like a last, single mooring had detached and I started to float away, still present, but at the same time unfastened from the confusion.

The calendar said late May and I needed to finish the school year.  Yet, he now lay relatively helpless in his bed at the mountain cabin.  We had an overlap of time to solve.

Now, three years plus later, it would have made more sense to take off the last two weeks of the term and care for my husband.  But living forward in time, the curse of us all, I was sure the school couldn’t remain standing without me.  I was compelled to finish the academic year.

In an act of kindness, Chad’s younger brother, Peter, agreed to travel from North Carolina so I could work until the last day of school.  Underneath Peter’s offer lived an honest fear of losing his big brother to cancer.  It was easier for him to come to the mountains and see for himself than wait for second-hand news from me.

After his arrival it didn’t take too long for Chad to snap at his brother, too.  My husband felt so rotten, suffering so miserably, and his rants exploded over any provocation.  Fortunately, Peter took his brother’s outbursts in stride, seeming unaffected. I will always be grateful for his kindness and forbearance that terrible spring.

Once school adjourned, Peter left and we were on our own.  Every morning, after his loading of liquid nutrition and pain meds, we were off to the tumor center.  After his radiation treatment, or his chemotherapy we often met with other staff regarding his care.  The dietician took us aside and spent about forty five minutes showing us boxes of canned nutrition.  Neither of us could decide what the hell that was about.  The tube specialist checked his peg tube to make sure is was functioning properly.  Sometimes we saw the cowgirl, and at other times, the chemo oncologist.  I liked her enormously.  She dealt with us in a way that said “I know this is awful, and I will do my best.”

Over time the torture in his throat reached new levels of agonizing, searing heat.  Both of his physicians along with an array of nurse practitioners wrote all sorts of prescriptions for pain medications.  On his shoulder, Fentynal patches, crushed in water and injected through his tube, hydrocodone.  And injected straight through his peg–morphine liquid.  Chad also had a gargle of morphine suspension to hopefully trickle down his throat and put out the fire.  Oh, and melted percocet, too, right up the tube.

This descent into medicated hell set the stage for our “new normal.”  Living with Chad’s outrageous pain and altered personality wasn’t too easy. And a new dark age of fear and morphine closed in around us.

The Smell of Cancer.

A blond nurse in heavy makeup called his name, and my husband dutifully rose, glancing at me to do the same.  Delaying for a moment, debating my options, I stood too.

Back in an examination room his radiation doctor, a young, attractive cowgirl, took pictures of his neck–both sides–and displayed a CT scan undeniably bearing a clear tumor profile. There was no mistake, the ENT’s diagnosis was correct–Chad had stage four tonsil cancer and surgery became paramount.  This radiation doc announced that she had all ready reserved a date for his tonsillectomy.

This particular oncologist was a very perky, affirming young physician.  Wearing cowboy boots, and a western cut shirt featuring mother-of-pearl snap buttons, she and her assistant in smiling upbeat tones clarified what we could expect from his cancer treatment.  She described a restraint mask, gesturing toward his imaged tumor, that she would construct.  Using the proper measurement of his jaw line and tumor dimensions, the mask would provide marked targets for the radiation laser.  Chad would have to sit for a plaster fitting soon so she could fabricate a precise mold.  The radiation would blast any unchecked cancer cells the surgery didn’t remove.

Smiling with her mouth, not with her eyes, the oncologist admitted that neck-throat-esophageal cancer is the worst type on the patient.  She elaborated her point explaining that the neck has no thick layers of skin or muscle to protect the esophagus from extensive damage.  Elaborating, the doctor continued that as soon as the tonsils were out, Chad would undergo a minor procedure to have a feeding tube placed into his stomach for sustenance.  His throat would very likely become too burned to perform a swallowing reflex.

When we arrived home I confessed to him that I didn’t think I had another crisis in me.  In my previous marriage there had been nothing but catastrophe–in this marriage we had struggled with a blended family.  Just the thought of another calamity paralyzed me from the inside out.  I honestly wanted some way to take a pass on this new one.  He just hugged me, almost in desperation, saying everything would be all right.  I wasn’t assured.

When My Worst is My Best.

Hey folks,

Sorry I haven’t blogged in a few days.  I actually have been involved in two-day writing seminar.  Tomorrow is the big day for the next increment for River of January.

In the meantime, I need to ask something of you.

Would you please send your personal email to me at

chumbleg@aol.com

It is a way that I can keep you up-to-date on the final publication day for this epic book.

Thank You for reading along!

Gail Chumbley

chumbleg@aol.com

There were pieces missing in what I was watching in Florida—mysteries from an earlier time.  The only observable friction I witnessed played out over an air conditioner.  When Chum had built the place, he designed it so that the house angled to the southeast in order to catch the cross breezes blowing in from the Atlantic through jalousie windows.  In other words, there was no central air-conditioning, just the little window swamp coolers in three rooms: the living room, Chad’s bedroom and Helen’s old room.  The old man didn’t like to run these air conditioners because it cost money to pay the higher Florida Power and Light bills.  The insufferable heat and humidity didn’t seem to have an effect on him at all.  Every morning he donned his long green “old man” pants and a long-sleeved khaki shirt, sweating like mad, yet appeared quite comfortable.  What Chum considered frugal was, in Chad’s dictionary, “cheap.” 

After our marriage, my husband wanted to remain with me in Idaho.  I think it was mostly because he loved me and the West, but part of me believed it probably had something to do with his mixed feelings for his father.  I had a good teaching job, and my kids were established in school.  Plus, I owned the house we lived in.  Back in Florida, Chad had earlier lost his apartment on the 79^th Street Causeway to Hurricane Andrew, and then moved home to nurse his mother through her final struggle with emphysema.  Chum was there too, with his room in the basement.  The two men—Chad and his father—had cared for Helen together, jockeying around her oxygen tanks and tubes, keeping her fed and clean. 

My husband had wanted out of Florida for a long time, only waiting for his mother to get better, and his son to graduate from high school.  It had long been his dream to live in the mountains and to visit old University of Florida friends now residing in Boise.  Eventually his frail mother died, one thing led to another, and we ended up, as I already explained, meeting, and soon married.

Fifteen years later, unconscious, Chad’s life hung in the balance.  His back looked arched, his swollen chest protruded upward on a raised, levered hospital bed.  Monitoring over his still body, I recognized this was the spot where he would either live or die.  I heard no platitudes, no assurances, saw no smiles, or affirming nods from any of the medical staff.  There simply was nothing to say. 

His father had all ready been gone for a few years, dying on the same kind of medical bed, but in an assisted living facility.  Hospice had then kindly ministered to Chum through his last illness, and assured passing.  Looking down on my husband’s ravaged body, that first trip to Miami strangely returned to my thoughts, evoking the complex bond between this father and son, who now shared a haunting resemblance. 

What had drawn us to that little room with the beeps and lights was the culmination of one distressing appointment after another to a cancer treatment center in Boise.  These visits invariably involved copious amounts of prescribed toxic chemicals pumped into his body on a daily basis, and razor-sharp radiation that scorched his throat.  Health providers were literally killing Chad to cure him.  At least that’s the way it felt.