A random moment can uncover our personal unknown or evoke new life questions that demands attention.
I had just one of those moments the other day. I was sitting in the lobby of a theater waiting to be allowed into the musical Monsoon Wedding. A couple approached me. Elderly, aren't we all these days. The man said to me, "We saw you on the train heading here and I recognized you but not sure." I looked up and immediately recognized him. He was Donna's oncologist Dr. B.
I stood shook his hand and was introduced to his wife. They sat across from me on the A train. We all had masks on and I thought even as looked at the couple I have no hint of who he was. Now I know. We chatted about the play, their trip to India, his retirement yet still doing some work at a major university hospital. I shared my story. As if I have one worthy to share with a major medical luminary. God bless those who don't eye roll in front of me. I did speak, in detail and with great gratitude, what he offered Donna in his clinical work. One specific memory I shared was our first visit with him.
I mentioned how Donna was told by her PCP via VM at work that she had Stage IV Cancer and six months to live. I know such a WTF moment. Which that evening when Donna came home that was became an entire life long heart break. At this first visit with Dr. B. Donna asked if that was in fact her reality. I remembered and shared how he said, "Let's do an exam and look at your chart." He did the exam and spoke to her. "Donna, you're asymptomatic, the tumors are small, two of them are located where they can't be resected, and the brain tumor can be resected. Overall six months is not the plan but, this is Stage IV cancer and we'll do the best we can." He then did something that captured who he was and how he saw Donna. On a paper he drew a horizontal line. On the left end of the line he wrote Donna. On the right end he wrote Dr. B. He said, " You are the patient and I trust your insight. Please mark on this line where you want to be in relation to us working together. On left you have complete authority. I will follow that unless your decisions may harm you. On the right I have complete authority but, you will have authority to question all that I'm doing." Donna marked a spot in the middle. I have that document still.
After I related this to him in a positive way and how that gave Donna and I hope. Dr. B responded about the memory of such a tragic moment. Uhhh okay I guess there is an element of tragic but, it was amazing how this moment turned our planing to go to OR for assisted suicide was taken off the table. All he saw was me dwelling on her death not his brilliant and compassionate clinical self. I've been mulling his reaction to my sharing not just in that moment for a couple of days.
All I can say is it feels like what I write about is like explaining Norway to a dog. I'm not sure what I write, share, and video really speaks to what I feel or want to say. It must be my failure to communicate. I knew Nina our Westie heard my words but Nina kept turning her head trying to figure it out.
I'm reading "Easy Beauty" written by Chloe Cooper Jones. It's a memoir about living life with a disability. It is so much more but for now let me leave that there. In a segment she was writing about her father. Jones said "He saw the world through the lens of himself." This has stuck with me as well. Is the sharing I'm doing truly through the lens of myself? Am I in fact abstracting my thoughts to tell a story from somewhere else and not me? Which feels like journalism and not memoir.
It seems Dr. B did not understand what I was saying or he saw it through his lens of a thousand patients many who've died. Therefore his lens sees me as living in the world of Donna's death and not what I wanted to communicate: hope was given when there was none. That's the crux of what seems to be the rote grinding life I have lived or not lived since Donna died. I'm not apparent to others maybe not even to myself. My self my thoughts seem to be like 'explaining Norway to a dog'. Y'all tilt your heads wondering what am I saying and why.
Have I been failing to communicate? Is all that I've written and shared and podcasted and YouTubed missed what was my truth? Has it all been story telling and not truth telling? Here is a quote from Cooper Jones book that captures the small random meeting and it's fallout.
"Let me tell you the truth not a story ."
I've been explaining Norway to my dog all along and never really took the time to wrestle my genius out from me with the harsh truth. The corollary for all of this is more truth and less sharing.
Now what! Okay so this maybe my new journey into the unknown. Or the known I fear to share. Even if there is nothing to go back to, there's something to go towards. Stay tuned folks.