CHAPTER 2
ON MY BACK, ON THE COLD METAL RACK
The nuclear medicine technician injects a syringe containing a radioactive isotope into my vein. The isotope flows through my bloodstream and gathers in any area containing a tumor. The nuclear-medicine equipment would detect this accumulation.
Questions, thoughts, and fears clouded my mind as I lay down on the metal exam table waiting for the test to begin. Could the cancer be gone? Suppose it’s spread to another part of my body?
One of the technicians positioned the scanning machine a few inches above my face. She winked at me, whispered “Good luck,” and went to the control desk to start the test. The technician had run several of my nuclear medicine tests in the past. Maybe she would give me a hint—maybe she would let me know the results so I didn’t have to wait three agonizing days for the radiology doctor to read the pictures, write a report, and pass it on to my doctor.
Damn, she’s leaving the room. Another technician is taking her place! I don’t know this guy—that means he won’t violate the holy and sacred Prime Directive of Test Technicians and tip me off about my test results.
As the scanning machine hovered over my throat, smoothly inching its way on its metal tracks toward my torso, I squinted to catch a glimpse of the test monitor. All I could see was the tiny, faint image of my body on the monochrome screen, legs together, arms glued to its sides, a voodoo doll waiting for its pins.
Maybe I can read this technician’s face and body language... The machine is now over my shoulder area. What about the tumor?
The technician wheels in the chair to look at me. He nods; I nod. He looks back toward the monitors, squints, folds his arms tightly over his chest. Folded arms are a bad sign! Does he not like what he sees? Or does he have a stiff back?
The machine is over my torso, scanning my internal organs. The technician plops back into the chair and yawns. A good sign; he’s bored by what he sees, unless he stayed up late last night watching a hockey game.
His brow furrows and his lips purse… What does that look mean? Is that my liver flaring up on the screen? Maybe not—maybe this guy’s just in a bad mood, thinking about a fight he had with his wife… he isn’t even looking at the monitor...
I shut my eyes and feel the tension in my body. This is madness; I’ll go insane trying to read something into this guy’s face.
I focus on the tightness in my temples and unclench my teeth. My forehead relaxes as I imagine my lungs pumping breath into it, calming it. Slowly I repeat this procedure with my neck, shoulders, arms, chest, and downward, scanning my body for tension, finding it and using my mind and breath to release it.
I am calm. But what will happen when I go home and wait for the test results?
DECODING THE LANGUAGE OF GREAT BIRDS
A heron, bluish-gray in color and about four feet tall, stalks fish and frogs in the reeds on the other side of the pond behind my house. Deliberately it raises a reed-colored leg and carefully places it into the water a foot ahead of its other leg, barely disturbing the placid surface of the pond in the process. After many minutes of standing motionless it will raise the other leg and repeat the process.
Sooner or later a fish or a frog will fatally mistake one of these legs for a reed and the eight-inch beak will pluck it from the water and effortlessly gulp it down its S-shaped neck. Then it will carefully move its other leg….
I mimic the crane, shifting the weight onto one leg while gently raising the other and placing it mindfully on the ground a couple of feet in front of me. Then I fill that leg with my weight and repeat the process with the other leg until I’ve done it fifty times.
This is the Qigong exercise known as Fifty Steps. It’s designed to strengthen the bones and muscles of the legs and foster a better sense of balance. Chinese martial arts masters had observed the movements of cranes in various provinces of China and patterned the exercise after the great bird’s patient actions.
Luckily for me I had an expert, though unknowing, teacher to follow. The great heron would stop by our section of the pond about once a week or so, and I looked forward to its visits. I admired its patience in hunting for food; instinctively I felt I had to adopt the same forbearance to continue living.
I began practicing another crane exercise, designed to imitate a crane that had just landed on a stalk of bamboo, balancing itself by slowly flapping its wings. Cranes, like other long-flying birds, initiate the flapping motion from the center of their bodies, which gives them the power and endurance to fly great distances.
A person could emulate this motion by standing straight, feet shoulder width apart, gently rocking back-and-forth on the soles of the feet, arcing the spine, chest, and shoulders. The hands and arms follow this motion, gently rising and falling in front and behind the body like wispy clouds of incense smoke. You inhale as the body arcs and the arms “flap” forward, and exhale as the body expands and the arms descend behind the body.
The movements stretch and relax the entire body, starting with the spine. By focusing the mind on the combination of movement and breathing, you stop thinking and the exercise becomes a meditation.
Gradually, problems disappear. The cancer disappears. Time, or the conception of time as a linear vehicle divided into years, days, hours and minutes, disappears. There is only the present; there is no past to ponder, no future to consider.
Sometimes, even the present disappears; one loses awareness of oneself, as a being consciously breathing and moving his body. It’s as though an outside agency has taken over and is breathing for me.
Then, unfortunately, awareness pops back into your head. What was that all about? Where was I? Wherever I was, I want to go back.
I finish the meditation. My body is relaxed and stretched. My mind is calm and refreshed. This feeling will last for a while, like the runner’s high that athletes experience after endorphins are released into their bloodstream during high-intensity aerobic exercise. Except I feel calmer than that; I don’t feel gung-ho, like I could conquer the world for the next two hours—it wouldn’t even occur to me. I don’t want to conquer the world. I just realize that I can live in it without it conquering me.
Dr. N. called me with the test results: No cancer in my shoulder, or anywhere else in my body. Tremendous news! Yet she and the UCONN doctors recommended that I proceed with the second bone marrow transplant. They felt it was the best shot for eliminating any remaining cancer cells once and for all. My euphoria faded at the prospect.
I glanced outside at the pond. The heron was on the other side, standing motionless on a small sandy beach, wings half-extended to allow the sunlight to penetrate fully to its steel-gray body. I had never seen it adopt this wide-open posture before. Don’t lose your nerve now, Bob. Stand up and be ready, it seemed to be saying.
Never was I one to believe in omens, especially from birds, or from the entrails of birds, but there was no room for doubt at that moment.
Carefully I opened the French door leading to the deck surrounding the back of my house and moved to a spot where I could face this magnificent creature. I extended my arms halfway from my body, holding my forearms at a forty-five degree angle to my upper arms, mimicking the crane’s posture. I closed my eyes in silent salute and focused on my breathing.
Twenty or thirty minutes later I opened my eyes. The crane was gone, and it had taken my fear with it.
A LAST WISH FOR CHRISTMAS?
It’s Christmas Eve, forty degrees, raining, and I’m facing a bone marrow transplant. Rain beats steadily against the roof, then echoes hollowly as it runs through the aluminum gutters surrounding our home. Traditionally this evening is when my wife, Sheryl, and I exchange our gifts to one another.