{"id":2750,"date":"2020-09-14T07:13:04","date_gmt":"2020-09-14T11:13:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/?p=2750"},"modified":"2020-09-14T07:59:24","modified_gmt":"2020-09-14T11:59:24","slug":"duetting-memoir-33","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/duetting-memoir-33\/","title":{"rendered":"Duetting: Memoir 33"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Duetting:<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re flying in the wrong direction,\u201d Marika said. \u201cThe geese. They\u2019re going the wrong way.\u201d She was living back at home after her year in college and second summer in the hospital. We were about to leave for the hospital in Rochester when we heard, overhead, the shrill commotion of geese in their winter migration south. Autumn departures of geese are head and heart-turning events in Upstate New York as the sky fills with their cries, long before one spots the approaching V-formation of their flight.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe they\u2019re just circling before they leave Ithaca,\u201d I said. She was right. Wrong direction.<\/span>
\n\u201cStupid geese,\u201d she muttered, still staring up at them, expressionless.<\/span>
\n\u201cWell, we always end up driving the wrong way, and we have GPS and road signs down here,\u201d I blathered, watching the commotion disappear. She grimaced briefly in my direction and plopped into the passenger seat.<\/span><\/p>\n

To accommodate the complex treatment in autumn 2009, Marika and I drove to Rochester three times a week with an occasional overnight stay. The Roc Docs were urging us to move up there for two months, for the rigorous schedule of dialysis, spinal chemo injections, and IV arsenic treatments. Social workers had researched places we could rent nearby that had no stairs. But we wanted to stay in Ithaca. Carpenters installed handrails in the house so Marika could reach her bedroom upstairs. None of this fit into Marika\u2019s plans once she\u2019d been sprung from Strong. She wanted to get on with her life, to be free of me and doctors and cancer. The social workers abandoned the idea to have us relocate, and were suddenly helping Marika apply for social services so she could afford her own apartment in Ithaca. There were conversations that didn\u2019t include me now.<\/span><\/p>\n

Life was gray and clouded, like the autumn sky over Ithaca, as we waited in a holding pattern: Marika hoping for funds to help pay for an apartment, and myself, anxious about locating a donor for a bone marrow or stem cell transplant. Greg was not a match. I was edgy because it was a risky procedure. Also, Marika had completed her chemotherapy, and the protocol demanded a pause in treatments before the transplant. Which meant there was nothing holding the cancer at bay.<\/span><\/p>\n

On a dark afternoon in mid October, we sat in the Cardiology Center at Strong. Marika was intently studying her cell phone, her head at an exaggerated angle to accommodate viewing texted messages with her good eye. She looked up slowly from the phone, right through me, out across the empty waiting area\u2019s loveseats and end tables.<\/span>
\n\u201cJake died,\u201d she said, more to herself than to me. Then she was silent.<\/span><\/p>\n

I glanced at her still tearless face and didn\u2019t know what to say. The other almost-adult child with cancer was gone. And in my head something was cracking. Something piercing and threatening that I needed to escape. Much later I would wonder about the mother with a broken heart somewhere in Pennsylvania or New Jersey, but at that moment I muted everything. Marika and I returned home from the hospital and retreated to our individual rooms.<\/span><\/p>\n

In November, we drove to Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo for a second opinion about the transplant. The new Buffalo doctor examined Marika and read her history while I waited, crammed into a small conference room with her father and his wife.<\/span><\/p>\n

Doctor Wetzler had riveting eyes. And a kind of compassion I didn\u2019t understand. We\u2019d never met before and would probably never see him again. We were summoned into the exam room and it felt like when I enter an expensive boutique shop knowing I will not be buying anything. Doctor Wetzler purposefully touched each of us with his deep warm eyes, and then began,<\/span>
\n\u201cMarika is not strong enough to survive a bone marrow transplant.\u201d He said, \u201cWith her damaged heart, a transplant would be fatal at this time.\u201d There was silence. The world froze still as we digested those words. She could die? The cure we\u2019d been waiting for and counting on for so long could kill her?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cShe should have her own stem cells harvested and frozen after several months of chemo,\u201d he continued, looking at Marika, \u201cwhen you\u2019re free of leukemia cells. For a future transplant. Your heart needs time to heal.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

So. No transplant. No more risky procedure with bleak survival rates, possible organ damage, donor cells attacking normal tissue. Life-threatening complications. No more. Nothing. The lead blanket we\u2019d been living under was suddenly lifted.<\/span><\/p>\n

So Marika and I quickly headed for the car and drove the few blocks to the Anchor Bar and Grill, home of the original chicken wings. We ordered a feast. She took sips from my beer and waved a wing in the air. And then she told me her news, what I knew was coming sooner or later, the other issue I\u2019d dreaded for months.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMom, there\u2019s an apartment and I\u2019m gonna get a monthly check now so I can afford it and Julie lives there and it\u2019s in Collegetown,\u201d she bubbled over in a long overdue spark of excitement. A storm grew in my gut. The wings on my plate grew cold.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“They’re flying in the wrong direction,” Marika said. “The geese. They’re going the wrong way.” She was living back at home after her year in college and second summer in the hospital. We were about to leave for the hospital in Rochester when we heard, overhead, the shrill commotion of geese in their winter migration […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1998],"tags":[2131,2133,2142,2134,2128,1526,2049,2039,2132,2090],"class_list":["post-2750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1998","tag-cancer-deaths","tag-dont-let-cancer-win","tag-duetting-memoir-33","tag-going-the-wrong-way","tag-living-with-cancer","tag-losing-a-loved-one","tag-mother-daughter-relations","tag-parenting","tag-risky-procedure","tag-young-cancer-patient"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2750\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}