The Day My World Shattered

When I arrived back at the hospital after going home to shower and check on Griffey the morning after we checked into the hospital, Mike’s parents (Tom and Sue) and oldest sister (Trisha) were already there. Both his mom and sister were hobbling around on crutches following recent knee injuries (coincidentally both were on leave from work), which was quite comical at the time. At some point, one of the doctors ordered an MRI of Mike’s groin, which was where the most significant pain was. The rest of the morning was a steady stream of nurses, residents, and attending doctors performing neurological exams, asking questions about our trip to the Virgin Islands, and always wearing the same yellow protective gowns, gloves, and face masks, because, of course, this was an exotic and highly contagious tropical disease. The nurse got mad at me for not putting on a face mask or gown before I would enter the room. I’d been sleeping next to the guy and kissing him for the last 2 months since our trip to the Caribbean. I hadn’t gotten sick yet, so I was fully confident I was not going to get sick then, but whatever. I humored her.

Here’s where I start getting anxiety just at the thought of writing about it. The knot in my stomach returns and the rush of adrenaline makes me go numb for a split second, just anticipating reliving the next few moments.

Around lunchtime that day, I got up and opened the hospital room door for Mike’s mom and sister who were on their crutches heading to meet Mike’s dad at the cafeteria, when the head resident doctor and another resident walked up. Sue and Trisha asked if they should stay, since the doctors were coming in. The doctors told them they could stay and told them they didn’t need to put the yellow gowns back on. So they turned around and came back in the room taking a seat. All in an instant, I made a connection that these residents came in the room no longer wearing the yellow protective gowns and masks. It took just that one realization to know what was coming. I sat down and my entire body went numb. I could hear my heartbeat. Before the doctor even uttered one word, I had the understanding that my life would never be the same from that moment on.

“The results of the MRI showed you have some lesions in your hip bone and sacrum,” the pretty young doctor said with a somber face.

I’d heard everything I needed to know. Nothing else registered after that. Tears ran down my face, I couldn’t feel my body, and the word “widow” popped into my head. I started shaking, an uncontrollable shiver. Sue and Trisha were asking more questions and the doctor was answering that they “didn’t know yet exactly what it was.” I remember thinking I should try not to cry so I didn’t scare Sue and Trisha, but I don’t remember looking over to see Mike in that hospital bed and seeing his reaction. I wish I had been closer to him those few moments, I wish I’d been holding his hand, but I was paralyzed, glued to my chair. I wish I knew what was going through his head at that moment, but I’m sure it was similar to what was going through mine. He knew and understood what this meant. I think we both knew what “lesions” meant, and I think we both knew melanoma was the likely culprit. We were also not strangers to the grim statistics of melanoma that has spread beyond the original skin site. We’d looked them up before, relieved that Mike had been lucky enough not to fall into that category. What I do remember is Mike was calm, polite, and accepted the news as if someone had just told him they had forgotten to wash his socks inside out. In fact, I think he would have acted more upset by the socks. Mike’s ER doctor friend came and visited after reading the news in Mike’s chart. He told Mike that the resident doctor had described him in his chart as “stoic.”

Besides the head resident who’d been the one to break the news to us, none of the other residents ever came back to our room after that. Now that the exotic and mysterious infectious disease case had been solved, it wasn’t interesting to anyone anymore. We were just a regular old boring case of cancer – too depressing to go back in that hospital room, I’m sure.

Later that day, I curled up crying next to Mike in his hospital bed. He reassured me that we needn’t get ahead of ourselves and assume the worst. He promised whatever it was, he was going to fight as hard as he could. His words, meant to placate  me (and maybe himself as well), put me at ease, as if just maybe his positivity and determination would truly be enough. He said he felt fortunate to even have the chance to fight. “Some people are killed instantly, and never get that chance to fight for their life,” he reminded me. “At least I have that chance.” As an EMT, he’d seen many tragic deaths, including those of young children, and was acutely aware of how quickly life can be lost.

I didn’t sleep that night. Tossing and turning on my little cot on the floor next to Mike’s bed while he seemed to sleep fine, I was tormented by the pain of losing him and the fear of what the future would hold. A constant knot twisting tight in my stomach along with a heart rate that I could hear pulsing in my ears prevented me from getting any sort of rest. The heavy weight in my stomach and on my chest made me unable to breathe right.

The next morning the lovely oncologist, Dr. Joni Nichols came by to see us. She would be Mike’s doctor in Spokane for the next five and a half months and we would grow to love her. She reminded me of Diane Keaton, only warmer. Dr. Nichols had already read Mike’s chart, knew all the results, knew about both of our medical backgrounds, and always treated us like we were as equally involved in Mike’s treatment as she was. She trusted us and listened to us. She still holds a very special place in my heart.

That day, Mike underwent multiple MRIs, a CT, and a PET scan, each leading to more extensive scans because they kept finding more “lesions.” Every time Mike had a scan, afterwards we’d sit in his bed together anticipating one of the doctors coming in to tell us the results. My stomach would be in knots, and the second someone knocked and came in, there’d be that surge of adrenaline, my heart would race, and I’d start shaking. Once, the young head resident who had initially given us the news, came in to give us the report of more “lesions” and I was crying but Mike was comforting ME. Tears were running down the doctor’s face as well while she talked to us.

These so-called lesions extended throughout the bones of his vertebrae, his hips, and his femurs. Lesions were extensively throughout the liver, some in the lungs, one kidney, and a couple lymph nodes. The brain MRI was clear, which was a big relief. A liver biopsy was performed, where a long needle was inserted through Mike’s abdomen into one of his liver lesions to obtain a sample that would tell the doctors if, in fact, this was melanoma. As Dr. Nichols said, “Given your history, it is likely melanoma. But we can always hope for something else…like lymphoma.” How’s that for desperate? Hoping for frickin’ lymphoma.

I went home to our house again, this time to be by myself to pray. The house was left just as it was before our lives became about cancer. There were reminders everywhere of Mike being sick before we knew why – the candy wrappers, ginger capsules, a cup half full of spit – it was incredibly difficult for me to clean these reminders up because they were all that was left of a time when we didn’t know Mike had cancer, a time when we’d thought he just had the stomach flu. Everything in the house that was Mike’s made me ache at the thought of what I would do with that item if he was gone. I got down on my knees in front of the bed, tears and snot plastering my face, and begged God to let Mike live to be an old man. I prayed Mike had lymphoma or some other bizarre exotic disease that could appear as cancer, but be curable or treatable.

The bad news came sooner than we had anticipated. The results of the biopsy confirmed it was, indeed, melanoma. No big shock, just affirmation that we needed to move a mountain. An immovable mountain, in my mind. Dr. Nichols told us we needed to get to Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, and that Spokane was not the place to be treated for melanoma. We liked that idea. 

Sometime that day, we made the decision that Mike and I would move out of the house we were renting in Spokane and move in with his parents in Chewelah. I spent that day on the phone backing out of buying the new house (despite my earlier thought to buy it by myself), attempting to get our earnest money back, and arranging a leave of absence from work. Mike’s entire family was so amazing. Tom and Sue took Griffey home to their house and then over the next few days everyone in his family packed up everything in our rental house and put it all in storage for us.

We had a number of visitors over the next 3 days or so while we were there at the hospital. I had pharmacy school friends doing their residencies who came by (and also worked with us to get Mike started with an effective pain management plan), we had family and friends who visited, and Mike even had the director of the UW physician assistant program in Spokane and another faculty member come see him. Our attending doctor was a guest lecturer for the PA school and put in a good word for Mike to the director. They reassured Mike his spot in the program and the $44,000 scholarship he’d been awarded would both be held for him until the following year. This eased Mike’s stress and gave him something to look forward to. But I wondered to myself if they really believed that his coming back next year would be a possibility. I figured these were smart people, they knew enough about melanoma to know the chances weren’t good.

I pushed Mike out of the hospital Friday morning in his new mode of transportation – a wheelchair – then we stopped at the pharmacy to pick up his new medication regimen – Oxycontin, immediate release oxycodone for breakthrough pain, and Zofran for nausea. These would become the new staples of his diet. We had arrived at the hospital Monday night with the hope to get some answers, and we were leaving Friday morning with the hope for more time. More time to find a viable treatment option, more time to develop a deeper sense of spirituality, and more time to cherish each other and everyone else.

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