{"id":2840,"date":"2020-12-21T07:24:33","date_gmt":"2020-12-21T12:24:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/?p=2840"},"modified":"2020-12-21T07:15:50","modified_gmt":"2020-12-21T12:15:50","slug":"duetting-memoir-47","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/duetting-memoir-47\/","title":{"rendered":"Duetting: Memoir 47"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Sometimes I got my life mixed up with my daughter\u2019s life. Like whenever Marika\u2019s blood was drawn, I felt the pain. And once, in the ICU, I watched the monitor display her racing heartbeat for so long, I had to be taken downstairs to the emergency room as my own heart quickened and surged. Marika was getting the transplant, but I was getting a severe panic attack. As we waited for the transplant, I had to remind myself to relax. To breathe.<\/span><\/p>\n

Late in the afternoon on December 1, 2010, the Roc Docs entered our room looking defeated. I worried, maybe something had happened to our donor. Doc Phillips was back, heading the team. But he did not look like his jolly old self. He sat down heavily and began with a long sigh.<\/span>
\n\u201cYou are no longer in remission,\u201d he said to Marika. Remembering how we\u2019d postponed the transplant for her concert, I couldn\u2019t bear to look at her.<\/span>
\n\u201cSo there\u2019s no transplant?\u201d I heard a small voice say. Was it mine? Or Marika\u2019s?<\/span>
\n\u201cThings have changed. We do have some good news out of all of this. We have a silver lining,\u201d he said, recovering some of his cheer. \u201cA silver lining,\u201d he repeated. We waited, shaken. \u201cThe presence of leukemic cells makes you ineligible for the donor transplant. But,\u201d he said with a dramatic pause. \u201cBut, remember that collection of stem cells we harvested from you last March, after the arsenic treatments?\u201d<\/span>
\n\u201cYeah. And then I got leukemia again three months later,\u201d Marika wailed.<\/span>
\n\u201cWell, the new plan is to give you an autologous transplant using those cells, your own harvested cells, in the next day or two. This won\u2019t cure you, since you had leukemic cells shortly after the harvesting, but it can get you back into remission briefly. And then you can have the donor\u2019s-cells transplant.\u201d I hugged myself and wondered how many more months until we were on the way to being cured. Relapse number three, and it wasn\u2019t even summer yet.<\/span><\/p>\n

The autologous transplant was a quick, uneventful procedure, so at the end of the week I went home to Ithaca. When I returned on Sunday, an electronic piano had been moved into the hospital room. New posters were taped onto the wall opposite the bed. The place had a cozy, lived-in feeling, a look that smacked of exuberant festivities.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHow was your weekend?\u201d I asked, trying not to sound overly nosy.<\/span>
\n\u201cMouth sores,\u201d she said gloomily, reminding me of Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh<\/em>.<\/span>
\n\u201cOh, I brought you Vitamin Water. Maybe that will help.\u201d I unpacked food items, fresh laundry, and mail. Gift bags and an assortment of drinks from her father and his wife already lined the windowsill. A big shiny balloon sailed above the end of the bed, which meant Rachel had been there. I rarely saw Rachel anymore as she worked weekdays. She must have brought the half-eaten chocolate cake that sat on the bed-tray too. They\u2019d had a big party here all weekend, and I got to come back to Eeyore.<\/span>
\n\u201cCan\u2019t talk,\u201d Marika said sullenly.<\/span>
\n\u201cThat\u2019s not good. Are they giving you lozenges or something?\u201d I asked.<\/span>
\n\u201cCan\u2019t swallow,\u201d she said, grabbing the croissant I\u2019d placed on her tray.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the next few days her cell counts rose to acceptable levels and we went home for the holidays. Our donor, the complete stranger who was going to share his blood, rich with stem cells, so Marika could live, would wait for us. Again. For the end of January. I wrote and rewrote a thank you letter to him that the Roc Docs would deliver. The holidays sped by quickly. I celebrated everything I could. Chanukah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, the Winter Solstice. I made tiramisu. Marika and Greg took me out to Bandwagon, a new Ithaca restaurant and brewery. He bought dinner. She gave me her new CD. I gave them each hundred dollar bills wrapped in new gloves, with Chapsticks and chocolates.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not finished yet. The CD. There\u2019s another song to be added,\u201d Marika said. She sat across from me wearing a turquoise head wrap, large hoop earrings and eye make-up. She had a party planned for after dinner. Her friends were home from college, and she was cramming what she could into her nights. During the days she came home from Limbo to do laundry and sleep. She\u2019d creep down the stairs every so often, \u201cMom, \u2018s there anything to eat?\u201d I loved that time before the donor transplant. It was peaceful. Quiet. Like the calm before a storm.<\/span><\/p>\n

Deep, dirty snow mounded up along the roads in Rochester on the morning we arrived back at Strong for a full week of chemotherapy and radiation. I piled Marika\u2019s belongings onto a stray wheelchair in the parking garage. My own things remained in the car to be unpacked later at Hope Lodge, the cancer families\u2019 home away from home. I stashed away her bathrobe, slippers, and toiletries exactly where they were in the last room, and then, just as I pulled up a chair, Marika handed me a three-page typed document. Fumbling for my glasses, I saw it was a list of all the places in Rochester I could visit for free.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re not staying,\u201d she said firmly. \u201cI don\u2019t want you here all the time anymore.\u201d For a few stunned seconds I stood there trying to collect myself.<\/span>
\n\u201cBut your cancer is my cancer,\u201d I whimpered.<\/span>
\n\u201cMom. Get a life,\u201d she blasted back. For a few more seconds I forgot to breathe.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOkay, but I\u2019ll be here every morning for the doctors\u2019 rounds,\u201d I said, \u201cand then I\u2019ll leave until dinnertime.\u201d She loved her dinners. \u201cAnd I\u2019ll be on the treadmill in the family room for an hour after rounds each morning, if you need me\u2014need something.\u201d Despite my bruised feelings, I was gaining momentum. \u201cOtherwise I\u2019ll be at Hedonist Chocolates, Wegmans, The Owl House Caf\u00e9, or Dinosaur Barbecue,\u201d I added, naming her favorite Rochester eateries, \u201cor any of the places on this list.\u201d The plan worked for two days, and then the effects of the radiation kicked in and things started to get scary. On the third day, after the morning rounds, she flashed me her pathetic puppy-face as I got ready to leave.<\/span>
\n\u201cAren\u2019t you gonna stay?\u201d she begged.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Sometimes I got my life mixed up with my daughter’s life. Like whenever Marika’s blood was drawn, I felt the pain. And once, in the ICU, I watched the monitor display her racing heartbeat for so long, I had to be taken downstairs to the emergency room as my own heart quickened and surged. Marika […]<\/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":[2171,2185,1775,2170,2123,2169,2090],"class_list":["post-2840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1998","tag-cancer-recurrence","tag-duetting-memoir-47","tag-mother-daughter-relationships","tag-parenting-experiences-during-cancer","tag-parenting-through-cancer","tag-waiting-for-stem-cell-transplant","tag-young-cancer-patient"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2840","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=2840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2840\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}