July 2002 Archives

A number of friends have asked me how I reacted when I found out that I had leukemia. I'm not talking about the moments when I thought I had something or other, or when the doctors told me that it was "something in my bones," before I called home. They wanted to know what I did after Dr. Gorst sat on the edge of my hospital bed in Lancaster and told me, explicitly, that I had a "rare, acute leukemia." When he used the words for the first time I didn't even know how to spell them. Acute myelogenous leukemia. I mangled the words then; now I can spell them in my sleep.

One of my mother's friends approached me at a party, maybe a year after I left the hospital for good. It was a big family barbecue. There were hamburgers and hotdogs and beer and chips and little carrot slices on white platters. We filled ourselves on appetizers and weren't hungry for the main course. Most people were milling about the back yard, grabbing beers from the cooler, threatening to spray our cat with the hose. I went inside to change the CD when this friend of my mother's stopped me. She had been drinking all afternoon. It was hot outside and my head throbbed.

She asked me if I ever thought that I was going to die. Out of the blue, no preface to the question. It surprised me. I told her no, I never thought that. It never crossed my mind. Death was not an option.

She told me that I must have. How could I not? Things were so bad. I was hanging by a thread for so long. How could I not have thought I might die?

And maybe it's because she has never had leukemia that she can't understand. Maybe it was because I'm more optimistic than she is. I don't know. It angered me that she would try to tell me what I was or was not thinking. My mother did it to me once, also during that summer, when she tried to tell me how I should react to leukemia. She said the same to my sister, two some years ago, and we both agreed that it was none of her business how we dealt with leukemia. I told my mother's friend, again, that dying never occurred to me. Twenty years old is not the time to die. Period. End of discussion.

She continued to disagree with me; at one point, she actually told me that I must have, at some time or another, entertained the notion. Didn't I ever think it might happen? What about when I first found out? What about then?

It got to be so frustrating that I had to laugh. Sometimes people saw the word "cancer" like it was a death sentence. They assumed that I would see it the same way. They saw the hair loss and the vomiting. This friend of my mother's saw me when I was on antibiotics, after the brain surgery, listless and pale on the living room couch. They would dwell on the negatives too much. It got so they couldn't see anything but the negative aspects of leukemia.

After Dr. Gorst gently closed the door, leaving me alone with my cancer, I reached into my backpack for a pen and something to write on. I'd left my journal back on my desk, so I settled for a piece of notebook paper. This is what I wrote:

28 Feb 1990

There will be no crying over spilled milk, only a voice in the kitchen saying "could you toss me a rag, please? I've got a real mess to clean up."

My journal is slim and black and has many blank white pages. I have used a black pen throughout. It starts on July 29th, 1989, with two entries describing my goals and plans for the following summer. It continues in fits and starts, trying on different voices, sometimes the ink scratching across an entire page, sometimes only one or two paragraphs of lower case print and crossed-out sentences.

One page, maybe a third of the way through, has nothing but the word "red" written over and over again, upside down, sideways, twelve times in all.

More starts and stops follow. More commentary to myself. There are several attempted love poems, the beginning of a fantastic love story, something about a dream-girl come to life, a half-remembered dream about the conflict between a lake that falls in love with a man and the woman who tries to break the spell with magic pennies.

I'm reading the pages closely, now, because I know that I'm reaching the end of this book. There is one complete short short story here, one entry prior to the last one. I don't know where it came from: the handwriting is mine, but much, much neater and more controlled than the other stories. I remember writing it, of course, but I have no idea where the idea came from. Perhaps I'd grown tired of the many failed love stories and poems.

Whatever the case, the tone of this story marks a drastic change in my journal. A week or so after writing this story, my journal ends abruptly with one last non-fiction entry, dated 19 Feb 1990. The story is very short. I've transcribed it, here, exactly as it was written:

You're sitting on a bus, right. It's hot in the summer -- night. White car lights stream past. You're clean. Real clean, okay. You've got your fresh pressed business suit on. It's probably a dark grey, maybe ultra thin pin stripes; so thin you can hardly tell that they're there, except that the salesman said they were. You've got your red silk power tie and your Italian leather shoes. There's a solid leather briefcase in your lap that your wife gave you two Christmases ago, wrapped in left-over funny papers. She did it so you wouldn't get too serious at work, just like the Flinstones lunch box from your last birthday. Oh, you're clean all right. From the gel-pressed hair, to the fresh clean shave (you shaved at work, too, to ensure the smooth chin) and the suit and tie and shoes. You smell of crisp aftershave, of summer afternoons spent in air-conditioning, not on the sweaty street.

You are riding the bus, Mr. Clean.

You do this because it saves both time and money. The family only really needs one car, and since a bus runs right past your office, and right down the street from your nice blue house, you decided to commute. Your wife takes the car to and from her job, down in the valley. You ride the bus. 6:37 AM it leaves the corner; 4:45 is usually when you take it back, from the Park and Ride just across the street from your high shiny metal glass office building.

Tonight you're late. Mr. Punctual, Mr. Clean, Mr. See-My-Nice-Clothes. A client called and asked for the files or the invoice or the whatever it was that you were supposed to have finished yesterday. Yesterday was your anniversary, how sweet, and took the day off you did, forgetting about the report, or the thesis, or whatever. So you worked late and the sun fell behind a row of glass buildings. You shut the blinds in your office so that you could see better. Bent over a long mahogany desk and finished your work with nothing more than a thin line of sweat forming on your forehead. Called the Missus earlier and said you'd miss dinner, so sorry.

And now, at this very moment, you're rocking slowly back and forth on a city bus, your eyes dripping down with fatigue.

The man who sits next to you, suddenly, is wild eyed and heavy. He has a loose white sweat tee-shirt hanging from his chest. His breathing is labored. You shift in your seat, uncomfortable, of course, moving closer to the window. The man wipes sweat from his hair forearms. His jeans are tattered and dirty. He sits next to you, staring straight ahead, chewing on a piece of gum between heavy breaths. His hands are folded neatly in his lap.

Do you believe in God, he asks.

Pardon, you say, turning to look at him. His chin is covered with fine black stubble; his adam's apple bobbing bobs up and down with each chew. His face still points to the front of the bus. He makes no movement, makes no response, and for a minute you think you mistook him. You look around the bus, putting one elbow on the seat behind you to see the back of the bus. There are two hispanic kids on one of the side seats, an elderly woman folding her newspaper, and four girls taking up the entire back seat.

The bus is empty.

The man next to you is now breathing softly. He runs a pudgy left hand through his hair, straightening it a bit.

You believe in God? he says again, quickly. This time he turns to face you. His jaw is solid and tight. Green eyes reckless in the night. You open your mouth to speak.

Neither do I, he says, sliding the long knife between your ribs. You clutch your shirt, hands like sieves, feeling the blood pour through. The metal of the knife touches your fingers. Wild eyed green eyed licks his sweaty lips, turns the blade so that you feel it scrape your ribs.

Ah, you say. Ah, shit...

The man puts a roll in your mouth and pushes the knife deeper into your stomach. The blade cuts the insides of your fingers as you struggle to hold your insides inside. The man smiles. You begin to gag and your suitcase falls to the ground, popping open with the force.

As your eyes begin to close, and tiny, star-like things cloud your vision, you notice a thermos rolling down the floor. It has a picture of Fred Flintstone hitting chasing Barney Rubble. Fred carries a large club. Dino chases behind both of them, a caption saying "Yip yip." For some reason, you laugh, spitting up a thick red lump. The thermos rolls under your seat, and the darkness is complete summer night comes down around your ears.

Thank God there wasn't much in the way of an internet when I was initially diagnosed. I don't know how it might have changed my attitude if I'd been able to some serious research, if I'd been able to pull up survival rates at will.

(From The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society: the overall five-year survival rate for all patients with acute and chronic leukemia is 44 percent. However, when you look at the type of leukemia that I had -- acute myelogenous -- the five-year survival rate is only 14%.)

Or maybe I would have been fortunate enough to stumble across Stephen Jay Gould's The Median Isn't The Message, validating what I'd felt from the very early stages, that survival rates are a highly personal thing.

It is a natural question to ask. When Dr. Gorst was patiently explaining the disease to me in Lancaster, I reached out for something solid. What are my odds? Numbers are facts. They are concrete. You can lash yourself to them to help weather the storm.

I remember Dr. Gorst telling me that leukemia had an 80% survival rate. I did not push back. I never asked for clarification: eighty percent of what? Survival for how long? Is this for all leukemias, or my particular sub-type? He may not have actually even given me those numbers, based on research I've done since.

Dr. Collins gave me a different number, later, when I'd asked her the same question in the middle of my first round of chemotherapy. She gave it some thought. She paused before answering. I was young, and fit, and strong, but it had been weeks since the last of the chemotherapy, and my body had still not shaken it off. My marrow was not recovering.

"I'm going to be completely honest with you, Robert," she said. I want to think that she held my hand, but I doubt that she did. At least not then. Let's say that she came close to my bed and half-stood, half-rested against the edge.

"You are asking me what I think your chances are, right?"

I nodded. I'd recently received some demoral. It helped with my many fevers, but it also made everything feel fuzzy. I rubbed my face with my right hand, starting at my forehead, a slow swipe down to my chin, lingering over the bridge of my nose. I wasn't sure if I could feel anything.

"You might hear many different numbers," she continued. "There is always some amount of debate going on, some different way to spin the numbers. But the numbers, ultimately, are meaningless. It boils down to fairly straightforward math.

"Your chances are not 20% or 50% or even 80%. You either survive or you don't. Period. Today you are surviving. Yesterday you did the same thing. Every day that you continue to survive you have a one hundred percent chance of survival. Your odds, your personal chances of survival, are at 100%.

"Does that make sense? Does that help?"

I nodded again. I still couldn't feel my face, so I checked again to see if it was still there.

I knew that morning had finally arrived when a young, clean-cut doctor appeared at my bedside. He introduced himself as Dr. White. He explained that he'd been reading my charts, and that he'd been informed about my accident from the night before, about the blood-stained sheets. He had a small metal tray in his hand. I couldn't tell what was on it. He asked if he could see my forearm.

Still a little groggy, I raised myself up on my elbows.

"Here," I said, extending my right arm.

"Sounds like quite the mess last night," he said. He held my wrist with one hand, and ran a finger up my forearm, almost as if he were tracing some veins just underneath my skin.

I apologized.

Dr. White twisted my arm slightly, and then ran his hand back down my arm. He tapped at my wrist a few times.

"No, no," he said. "No need to apologize. We just don't want you losing any more blood."

He wiped away some dried blood from the base of my wrist. He used a cool alcohol swab, then dried the skin with a gauze. Suddenly, there was a sharp pain where the gauze had been. I looked down. He'd inserted the small needle at the very base of my wrist, and re-attached my I.V. to the end of it.

"What?" I was still confused. Why did he put the needle there?

"Don't worry," he said.

He took some adhesive tape from the table behind him, and taped the needle and a small amount of the IV tubing to my wrist and forearm.

I tried moving my wrist. It was awkward and uncomfortable. If I bent my wrist even a little bit, I could actually feel the needle. The only way to avoid discomfort was if I held my wrist perfectly still, perfectly straight.

"Look," I said. "This is really uncomfortable. Can't you put it in my forearm or my elbow or someplace?"

He shook his head.

"That's the point, now, isn't it? To make sure that it doesn't come out again."

I slept so much. My body was so desperate for sleep that I would nod off at every opportunity. During the winter in Lancaster, the days would often be covered with a thin veil of darkness. The morning would progress from black to a mute, overcast grey, then slowly back again to darkness. Within the confines of my hospital room, I lost my sense of day and night, lost it in all of those shades of grey. My first few days were a confusing mess of dreams and nightmares and waking memories.

February Night, Late, Lancaster

I remember waking from a nightmare.
I lose track of the dream.
Something about a chase -- a shadow,
some dark form, blurred, chasing me.

Upon awakening:
lying on my side
in a shallow pool of blood,
formed where the weight of my body
had caused the bed to sag.

During the dream, the nightmare,
while fleeing from the shadow,
I had wrenched the I.V. from my arm.

(my blood was not clotting,
you see.
so when the tube was pulled
from my vein,
a dark line in my arm,
it was like a faucet.
my heart
pumping pumping pumping
blood pouring onto the sheets)

I woke
dizzy, tired, three in the morning.
I felt guilty.
I remember this.
Guilty because I had soiled the sheets,
because the night nurse would have to change them.
He jogged down naked corridors,
returning from the linen closet,
new sheets and pajamas
bundled in his arms.

I remember not being worried
or afraid
that I had lost so much blood.
It was embarrassment:
that I was a child,
a small boy who had wet his bed.

My first aspirate was lying on my side.
The doctor anesthesized a spot on the
right side of the small of my back.
He pushed a needle into my bones
and I gritted my teeth against the pain.
Afterward, he put a pressure bandage
on the site of the wound,
telling me to lay flat on my back.

This was the thing about the early days:
my blood was not clotting.
Over and over again that was the most dangerous thing.
The bandage was soaked red in an hour.
A different doctor checked the bandage,
replaced it,
and suggested that I put my hand
underneath my back, lay on it,
to create more pressure.
I tried it, but my hand fell asleep,
and the bandage was red again, anyway,
several hours later.

And here is the funny part about all of this:
I had brought my books with me,
in case I felt like studying while I was in the hospital.
(i didn't know that i was going to be leaving lancaster,
that i had been to my last classes there)
After my bandage had been replaced
for the second time,
I took Henry IV from the desk near my bed,
a small soft book,
but suddenly hard underneath my back.
What I laughed about later,
with my English major stepmom,
was that this was probably
the best use I'd ever have for Shakespeare.

That for all his writing skill,
and for all his "tangled webs we weave,"
the thing that he did the best
was to keep my blood inside of me.

Sunday is difficult. I am in the Royal Lancaster Infirmary. They have put me in my own room. I have a portable toilet in one corner because they do not want me to go outside. One of the sisters brings a television set, vcr, and several movies. She asks me what other movies I would like to see. I tell her that I should probably call my parents. Could I please use the phone?

"One moment and I will bring one to you," she says.

The phone is on a cart. A long cord dribbling out underneath my door, across the corridor to the office. I had planned on calling much later. Past eleven o'clock again, for the cheaper rates.

But I'm in the hospital. The doctors have already told me, after a bone marrow aspirate yesterday afternoon, that I have "a bone disease."

Several hours after the aspirate, two of the doctors, a man and a woman, stand just inside my room. They both hesitate when they speak, as if they are not certain who should break the news. I forget their names. The woman tells me that they have narrowed it down. The man tells me that it is in my bones. The woman says that they are running additional tests. The man says we will know more later.

This is all that I have with which to call home (I have to call home, you understand):

Extreme fatigue for almost a week. Legs and stomach and back that are covered with bruises . Red dots on my feet and shins, bleeding gums (still), sores all across the inside of my mouth. On my tongue, even. And, finally, "a bone disease."

(if i'd had any kind of sense, if i knew even the slightest thing about cancer, i would have known then that it was leukemia. i was textbook. go to the library. find one of those thick reference books that i was so afraid to find for myself. reading through a list of symptoms will show nearly all of what i had. and still i was clueless. i had no idea what was wrong.)

The phone rings. She picks it up at the second ring.

"Hey, mom," I say.

"Robert. I'm glad you called." Excited. That lift in her voice. "I was expecting your call. But I won't be here this afternoon. I would have missed it."

"Why? Where are you going?"

"To the theater," she says. She is happy, talking fast. It is morning at home. I imagine her pacing around the house, the phone cradled under her neck. She talks with her hands. "We are going to the Fifth Avenue. Donna, Janet, everybody. We're all meeting downtown for lunch, then maybe some shopping -- Nordie's is having a sale -- and then we're going to see... what was that... I have the tickets here. Oh, yes. The Autumn Cycle. It's supposed to be quite good."

"Sounds like fun," I say.

"It should be. You know I always enjoying going out with the girls."

Small talk. The knowledge, in the back of my mind, that have to come out and say it. I have to make the leap. My heart thumps. I do not know how to say this.
There is a momentary silence. I'm looking around the room, realizing that I'm in a fucking hospital, and that my mother has to know. She starts to say something but I interrupt her.

"Mom, I have some bad news. Some pretty bad news, and there's no easy way to say this."

More silence. You know how sometimes it is possible to see the person on the other end of the phone? There is no logical way for you to see her, no video camera recording images, but you know her so well that sight is there anyway. The image is burned into your brain. You have seen silence time and again throughout your childhood, when you and your sister would fight and one or the other would get injured. Or when you would butt heads, you and your mother, testing the limits she'd imposed on your teen wings. You know what that silence looks like. It is visible in the hospital room. You can see it feel it taste it.

I see my mother's jaw tighten. Her body tenses. Shoulders, arms, everything. It is a clear difference; she becomes like a board. Her eyes stare at a point on the wall. They do not focus on anything in particular. Suddenly, the only thing that exists in her world is the tenuous phone line between us.

"What?" she asks.

"I'm in the hospital. In Lancaster. I've been pretty sick. I don't know if Laura told you or not. I've been feeling pretty run down the past couple of weeks."

"Yes?"

"Well, the doctors say that they aren't sure yet. They want to run some more tests. But they do know that I have a bone disease. Something in my bones is making my blood go bad."

(she knew then, my mother. she knew exactly what it was. you do not get to be a mother without knowing about leukemia.)

I try to describe my symptoms. She is crying and it is difficult to know if she hears me. I keep telling her that it will be all right that the doctors say I will be fine.

She wants facts. When did you do this? Where are you? What are the names of these doctors, where are you, what is happening?

And then she cannot speak. She sobs into the phone. I can't understand what she is saying.

Paul, my stepdad, comes on the line. We talk about the Sonics and the house and classes. He asks what mother is so upset about, did I flunk out or something (hah hah)? I tell him that I am in the hospital. Nothing serious, just the hospital, and she probably thinks it is worse than it is. You know how she gets (wink wink).

"Hold on, he says. "Your mother wants to talk to you again."

She starts talking immediately. Composed. She has a pad and pen with her. Not that I can see this, but I know; she needs to establish control. Give me the names of your doctors. What is the name of the hospital. How long have you been there. What exactly did they tell you. Are you on any medication. What is that time zone thing again.

There is no tone or pitch in her voice. She is struggling to hold back the flood waters. She asks me what they think it is and I start to answer something about uncertainty. And then she is wailing again. Hold on, she says (i think), I'm going to get your sister. She walks down the hall and pounds on Laura's door. The sounds are muffled, as if she is holding the phone at arm's length. I don't think she wants me to hear her crying.

There are a few more indistinct sounds and then Laura is on the line. Somehow I know what I am going to say to her; I have known for the better part of the day. I'd actually rehearsed it. It was earlier in the day, after the doctors had left, when I knew that I was going to have to call home. You have to understand that I dreaded making this call like no other phone call in my life. I'm in a small room in a small hospital in Northern England. The room looks out onto an alley. There is an I.V. running into my arm. Two bags, one yellow, one clear, slowly drip into the tube. I can't even leave the room to go to the bathroom. My urine, being collected in bottles, is still more blood than anything. I am having difficulty understanding the situation myself; how am I supposed to explain it to my family?

My sister and I are close. We are much closer now than we were in high school, but we would stick up for each other even then. Sometimes we would come home and fight. More than just verbal abuse. We would punch and scratch. There would be bruises. We even brought out steak knives from the kitchen, once or twice. I remember stabbing the floor next to her head, intentionally missing wide because I couldn't conceive of hurting her for real.

There was a kid named Jeff Woods who lived across the street from us. He was a year older than me, a year younger than Laura. Jeff and I built a tree house in the fifth or sixth grade. It was in the low maple next to his driveway. The tree house was only five or six feet above ground, nestled in thick, forking branches. We formed a secret club, away from mothers and sisters. I'm not even sure how it happened, but one day he threw me out of the club. Literally. The ground was wet and soft, covered with fallen leaves, and I landed on my back. He pounced on me, started tapping my chest with his fingers. He weighed more than me and I couldn't move. It was driving me crazy. He tapped and tapped and pretended that he was going to spit in my face.

And then Laura came out of nowhere, a flying tackle that sent Jeff Woods sprawling. She hit him. We'd had enough practice fighting with each other that she'd gotten pretty good at throwing punches. But she also knew that this wasn't her little brother that she was beating on; the rules were a little different. She tore at his hair. He screamed. He tried to get away but she had him pinned. Laura told him that if he ever tried to hurt me again then she would kill him.

She would look out for me. Bottom line. It was okay for her to beat up on me; I was off limits for anyone else. You fight and hate each other but, in the end, you take care of each other. That's what brothers and sisters do. If something threatened one, then it also threatened the other. We would present a united front and together we were stronger than the individual.

She is on the phone asking me what is happening. "What's wrong with mom?" she asks.

"Laura," I say. "I really fucked up this time."

Please be on my side. Protect me. I am your baby brother and you have to take care of me.

The aspirate is not fun. The doctor is an old man with thin white hair. He walks carefully into the room, as if trying to avoid marbles that have been scattered on the floor. His arms are thin and bony, but his grip is strong. He reminds me of a Norman Rockwell painting.

A male nurse enters the room after Dr. Gorst. He pushes a metal cart. It jangles with equipment.

"Robert," Dr. Gorst says, flipping through a couple of pages on a clipboard. He says my name almost as if it is a question, as if he is making sure that he is in the right room. I nod, but he is still reading the charts and papers, so I don't know that he sees it. He finally sets the clipboard down. He lowers himself to the edge of my bed, hands on his thighs, a deep exhale as he sits down. He pats my legs. There is something about this man that I like. I imagine him in a battered cottage in the country, removing lollipops from a big glass jar, smiling at the children he helped deliver.

But then he asks if he can take a look at me, and I remember that he is an oncologist. A blood specialist.

He puts the back of his hand against my forehead. He asks to see the sores inside my mouth. "Have you been bruising at all," he asks.

"A little," I tell him. I am wearing shorts underneath the blankets. "There are a few on my feet. See?" I pull back the blankets.

"Yes. And these spots, too."

I tell him that I don't know what those are.

"Would you mind turning over for a bit, son?" he asks.

I roll onto my stomach. He touches a few spots on my legs. "You look like a punching bag back here," he says. I glance over my shoulder and see several purple and black on the backs of my thighs. "You can turn back over, now," he says.

"Well. There is no question that we want to do this aspirate. Do you know what an aspirate is, son?"

"No. No idea."

He clears his throat. He turns to the male nurse. "Can I see that one... no... over there... yes. That's the one." The nurse hands him a long needle.

"Are you afraid of needles, son?"

I tell him that I am not, even though the sight of that particular needle is more than a little spooky.

"Good, good. This needle here is hollow. There is a little hollow tip at the end. Can you see it? I will put this into your back, just above your tailbone, and pull out a sample of your bone marrow. That's what we are after, really, your marrow. Now it might hurt a bit. We are going to have some anesthesia back there, but I'll need to put a good deal of pressure on your back. It needs to go into your bone, understand, so it might take some work."

I nod again. Somehow I wish that his arms were larger.

"Good. Excellent. We can go ahead and start now, if you'd just lay on your side. That way. On your left side. Good."

I ask him if it would be easier if I removed my shirt. He tells me that would be fine, so I take it off. I lay on my side. There is the clatter of metal on metal behind me. Dr. Gorst clears his throat again. He whispers to the male nurse, and then I feel something cool and wet on my back. An alcohol swab, I guess.

"There will be a little sting here, Robert. This is the anesthesia. It will be like a bee sting, and then things will start getting numb."

"Okay."

And then the sting comes, exactly as he said it would. It is near my hip, on the right side of my back. The "up" side. My skin begins to feel tingly and numb. I can feel him working the needle around, spreading the anesthesia. He pushes against the skin. His thumb is there but I can't really tell. The male nurse hands him a different needle. He pushes in more anesthesia.

"You're doing fine, son. I'm going to put the other needle in, now, the hollow one. Here is where it might hurt. If it starts to hurt too much, let me know, and I'll give you more anesthesia. But you have to let me know."

I clench my teeth. I don't feel the needle enter my skin, but I do feel pressure against my tailbone. It is a steady pressure. Dr. Gorst grasps my hip with his hand. The pressure increases to the point of pain. Extreme pain. Anesthesia can do nothing for this type of pain, I know, so I say nothing. It hurts like hell, and I bite down, eyes closed, trying to think of other things.

It stops hurting. Dr. Gorst releases his grip. He takes a deep breath. "Those are some strong bones you've got there, son." He chuckles. "Let's try again."

The pain increases. I want to cry out. It feels as if he is trying to drive a spike through my back. But I tell myself that I can't scream. He is doing his job. He is doing what he has to to help me get better. It will be no easier for him if I complain about a little pain.

"There," he says, finally, taking the needle out of my back. "That should be plenty." The sound of paper tearing. A dry cloth wiping at my back and then some kind of adhesive. There is a thick bandage on the site. Dr. Gorst stands up to leave.

"We should have the results back for you in a few hours. At least the preliminary results. We'll want to run quite a few tests. But I'll be sure to let you know as soon as we find out anything."

I thank him for his efforts.

"No, son, thank you. That had to hurt, but you were very good about it."

I start to thank him again, but he cuts me off.

"I will be back with these results as soon as possible. Get some rest. Sleep. You'll feel much better for it."

The results of the blood test are not good. They tell me that they need to do some additional testing. They tell me that they have called a specialist, an oncologist, who knows more about things in the blood.

"There's something in my blood?" I ask.

That's what we are not sure of, they say. That's what the oncologist will tell us, Dr. Gorst. Your blood is bad. It has gone bad but we don't now how. He will tell us if it is in your blood making your blood go bad, or if it is your bone marrow doing the same. We aren't sure just yet.

We make a brief stop back at Pendle, just long enough for me to duck in through my open window, stuffing a few odds and ends into my backpack: some homework from my Shakespeare and Victorian Lit classes, my Walkman, a few mix tapes, extra batteries, toothbrush and toothpaste, deodorant. I exit through my door, locking it behind me. I pass by David on my way back outside, giving him the condensed version of recent events - I'm going to the hospital, probably overnight, not sure why, will call with more info later - before I'm on the road again into Lancaster proper.

The sister leads me through the Royal Lancaster Infirmary. It is old and worn. We wind our way through narrow corridors. Paint flakes from the walls and ceiling. We stop outside a small room, where we are greeted by a young man in a white coat.

"You must be Robert," he says, shaking my hand briskly. He looks exactly like the first doctor, the one from the campus infirmary. Except he's older, and he doesn't have a beard, and his hands aren't cold. Plus he doesn't ask any questions. Maybe it's the eyes.

"This will be your room," he says.

He leads me into the room. It is just across the hall from what looks to be some kind of nurses' station. I mean "sisters." That's what they call nurses here, at least the ones I deal with. There are windows on two sides of the room. A smaller one looks into a narrow alley, the other, larger and wider, gives me a view into the interior of the hospital.

A simple bed rests in the middle of the room, white sheets and white blankets, enough space to walk on either side. It surprises me that I have my own room. There is a vast ward just outside the room, with beds no more than five feet away from each other, light curtains separating them. But here I have my own bed, and walls, windows, a door. Seems odd.

"This is mine?" I ask, a little uncertain about the arrangement. It can't be more than a few hours after I first walked up to the campus infirmary. My mind is slow to catch up. And with all this walking around and everything, meeting all these new people, only getting fourteen hours of sleep the night before, I'm beginning to feel pretty wiped. Before I settle down, I want to make sure.

"You might as well make yourself comfortable," the doctor says. He pats the bed.

"What's next?" I ask. "Do I have to do anything?" I'm thinking a nap would be nice. I'm hoping there's not much for me to do other than sleep, get some medicine, maybe catch up on some homework later. It occurs to me that I haven't had any lunch yet. Can I even eat? Will they bring me food? Hospitals do that sort of thing, don't they?

"We're going to want a sample of your blood, first. A good sample. One of the sisters will be here in half a moment to help out. She'll draw the blood.

"From there, depending on what the blood test tells us, we might want you to meet a specialist, here, a hematologist. He's fantastic. Dr. Gorst. Marvelous."

"A what?" I ask.

"He's a specialist," the doctor says again. He moves throughout the room, adjusting the blinds, checking the bed, lining up a row of empty plastic bottles on a small table underneath the interior window.

"We suspect something might have gone bad in your blood. This quick test, from the blood draw the sister will do, this will help us understand more about what's happening. Dr. Gorst, he'll have some additional tests he might want to run, when he arrives later."

The doctor stops short, as if remembering something.

"But I'm getting ahead of myself. What's next? Try to get some rest. We'll be just outside if you need anything."

"Thanks," I say.

The sister from the University, who has been standing in the hall, reaches through the door and hands me my backpack. She smiles tightly.

"Good luck to you," she says.

She steps out of the examining room to make the phone call. I'm too tired to think. When she returns, she relaxes in the chair and asks me if I've been enjoying my stay in Lancaster? How long have I been here? Where are some of the places I've been able to visit? Where do I live in the States?

We talk for five or maybe ten minutes without saying a word about my health.

The doctor comes blustering in from the cold. His cheeks are red. He smiles and shakes my hand. His gloveless hand is cold against mine. The sister stands up and offers him her chair; he shakes his head no, then leans up against the edge of the desk close to me. He is fairly young, maybe forty-five, fifty, with a salt and pepper beard. His eyes are dark and questioning. More of the same questions as before, with more of the same answers. He uses a cotton swab to dab at the numerous sores inside my mouth. He shines a pocket light into my eyes, down my throat.

"Tell you what," he says after only a cursory examination. "I have a colleague at the Royal Lancaster Infirmary. It's the hospital in town. He's a specialist. I'd like for him to take a look at you."

"That's fine," I say, not thinking to ask what kind of specialist. "But I don't have a car or anything. I'm not sure how I'd get there."

He laughs.

"Definitely not a problem. The sister here will take you. He might want you to stay overnight -- my colleague, that is -- so you should probably pick up a few things from your room. Toothbrush and toothpaste. A change of clothes. You can stop by your room and pick up whatever you need."

"What do you think it is?" I ask.

"Impossible to say, really," the doctor says.

"Will I be at the hospital very long? I mean, should I tell somebody?"

The doctor shrugs. "Good luck to you," he says.

I stalk back to my room and pull on a pair of sweats. Most of my clothes are dirty. Rooting through the pile on the bottom of my closet, I find a reasonably clean sweatshirt. No time for a shower -- at least some sense of urgency, now. I wedge on a battered pair of Keds with no socks because I can't find any. I brush my teeth and spit out blood.

The walk across campus is a lonely one. Pendle College is at the far south end of campus, the infirmary at the far north, off the Spine. On weekends, Lancaster University is deserted. Most of the students go home. There are only a few people walking along the Spine, mostly around the library, and even fewer after I branch off north, heading to the outskirts of the campus. The wind has picked up again, blowing hard from the northwest. It tears across the top of the hill. It cuts through my thin denim jacket. Rain-soaked grass numbs my feet. I am cold and wet and more than a little frightened. I am not prepared.

The sign at the infirmary says that they are closed on Saturdays:

In case of emergency, ring the bell. There will be a sister on duty.

I hesitate for a moment, thinking that it can wait until Monday. The image of twice-bloody urine convinces me to stay. I ring the bell a few times before the door makes unlocking sounds. A short woman pulls it open. She smiles and invites me inside.

"What can I do for you?" she asks.

I'm thinking about how best to summarize the past couple of weeks, but I don't have a chance to say anything before she interrupts.

"One moment," she says, closing the door behind me, "let us talk in here."

She leads me through the dark and empty waiting room to an expansive, high-ceilinged examining room. There are charts on the walls. Two soft tables jut out into the center of the room, crisp paper stretched across the tops. Counters line the walls. At the far end of the room is a good-sized wooden desk. It is bathed in a mute light from the tall window behind it. Cotton swabs, Kleenex boxes, tongue depressors, and several loose manila folders decorate the desk. The sister sits down in an oversized leather chair behind the desk.

"Sit down," she says, rearranging some of the folders before looking up at me. "Please do continue."

I start to explain some of my general symptoms. Just a few things, off the top of my head: tired, feverish, sick and tired for days.

"More than anything else," I tell her, "it has been the intense fatigue. I just can't shake it. But there are other things. See these?" I say, lifting my upper lip. "A bunch of sores. I don't know why."

She removes a tongue depressor from a bluish jar.

"Hmm," she says.

"And I guess the really important one happened earlier this morning. My urine was all bloody."

"Bloody? Was it painful? Did it burn?"

"No. It wasn't -- it didn't. I thought it was kind of strange, so I thought I should get it checked out."

She nods her head. "Yes, yes. I'm glad you came in. Do you think I can get a urine sample?"

"I'm not sure. Maybe. I've already gone twice this morning."

She gives me a glass of water to drink, and a plastic cup to pee in.

"The bathroom is just over there," she says. "Take your time. Please try."

"Hmm," she says, almost to herself. "The fevers and such I can understand. There has been a bug going around, and I can understand that. I'd prescribe plenty of rest and Vitamin C (she pronounces it vit-uh-men, which is one thing I love about England). But those sores on your mouth. And the urine. I am afraid that I don't know what's going on, either. I am going to ring the doctor on call. He lives just a few minutes away. I hope I can reach him. He should have a much better idea of what is wrong."

I wake up again a little after noon. My window is fogged up. I open it about halfway and smell the cool air, thick and wet. There is a steady, refreshing drizzle. On my desk, next to the window, is a crowded jumble of papers and books, pens, empty coffee cups, loose change. My journal is slim and black. It rests on an empty corner of my desk. I lean up against the windowsill and thumb through my journal. I'm looking for the last entry, about three quarters of the way through the book. I'd written a note to myself, not even a week ago, a list of symptoms that I was ready to ignore. The early morning memory of blood-stained urine is strong as I re-read the entry.

This is wrong, I tell myself. This is so very wrong.

With that, I am out the door, walking back down the narrow hallway. I'm still not convinced. There is one simple way to prove that it was a delusion, the bloody urine, earlier this morning. My bladder burns from the half-bottle of orange juice. Without question, I tell myself as I stand above the toilet, definitely, absolutely, if this is bloody again, then I will go to the infirmary.

Bloody it is. More blood than anything. As if I'd swallowed red food coloring by mistake, as if the whole thing was some elaborate practical joke. There is no pain. It does not sting or burn. But blood pours out of my body in a way that it should not.

He wakes up twice during the night.

The first time he is shivering. His comforter is tucked underneath his neck; his knees are balled up around his chest. And still he is freezing. Goosebumps raise the hair on his arms and legs. The second time he wakes up, the comforter has been thrown to the floor. His shirt is damp from all the sweat. It is a restless night. His mouth is dry when morning finally comes.

The bathroom is down the hall, next to the kitchen. It is early Saturday morning, and none of his floor mates are up yet. He walks down the hall in his underwear and a long white tee-shirt. He stops in the kitchen first, thirsty, digging through the small fridge for some of his food. There's half a bottle of orange juice in the crowded door. He finishes the bottle.

Outside, the morning drips wet and grey. The skies are heavy with charcoal clouds. Winds blow down from the north.

He rinses out the bottle, sets it upside down next to the sink, and smiles.

"Today," he thinks, "is the day I will get better. A perfect day to stay inside and slurp chicken noodle soup and drink orange juice and just rest. A perfect day to mend this battered body."

The air is crisp and clean. He takes a deep breath before walking back into the hallway.

And then he is in the bathroom. He is still tired and feverish, a little wobbly standing above the toilet, but even still it's impossible to deny what he sees: his urine is bloody. No, that's not an accurate description. It's not so much that his urine is bloody as it is that he's just peeing blood. As far as he can tell there's nothing but red coming from his body. The toilet water swirls red.

He shuffles slowly back down the hall. His left hand drags against the wall. Inside his room, he locks the door so that no one can bother him. He checks his clock before slumping back down on the bed: 7:52 AM. He tries to remember what he could have possibly done the day before that would have made him so utterly exhausted. There is nothing. He wipes his teeth on his tongue and tastes blood. He swings his legs under the comforter and closes his eyes.

"I will do something about this," he says to the wall. "I will get up and do something as soon as I sleep a bit longer."

We were playing pool, Simon, Wayne, Jim and I.
The JCR was mostly empty.
The four of us, a few other people standing around.
Kristi sat on the couch, reading. She looked up occasionally.
We were playing doubles, I think, or maybe we used both tables.

Wayne had a tape that we used to listen to,
after we'd come home from drinking.
It was Peter Cook and Dudley Moore
doing an improv radio show in their alter-egos,
Clive and Derek.
What made the tape so funny was that they were drunk, too.
They did the show while they were hammered.
So we'd come stumbling across the square at Pendle,
drunk, bumbling into Wayne's room,
and we'd listen to the tape,
crying, sometimes, from laughing so hard.

One of the funniest parts of the tape
was when Clive and Derek would talk about various
cancers that they had,
outdoing one another as small children might.
"I've got cancer of my overdraft,"
"I've got cancer of the mortgage,"
"Well, I had cancer before you did,"
"I had cancer before I was even born,"
"Yeah? I have cancer of infinity, and I had that
before I was born which was before you."
And so on, laughing,
making light of a serious subject.

During our pool games, then,
not many people around,
we kept saying "I've got cancer of that shot,"
or "I've got cancer of the pool cue,"
or "I've got cancer of your face."
It was funny.
We laughed until we cried.

my gums had been bleeding for three days.
i had been sleeping twelve to fourteen hours a day,
but still awoke exhausted.
the ring finger knuckle on my right hand
was lost in a bruise.
i kept drinking my beer, as we were playing,
so that the blood would wash off my teeth,
so that i could smile and laugh with everybody else.

I leaned against a pinball machine, tired.
Kristi sat on the couch, not really reading anymore,
watching us play pool, listening to our jokes.
"That's not funny," she said,
as we laughed about Jim's cancerously bad shot.
"That's not funny at all. There are people with cancer, you know. It's not a funny thing."
"Bollocks," Wayne said. "I've got cancer of their cancer."

We all laughed and smiled
and i cleaned my teeth with my tongue, first,
so that the blood wouldn't show.

It's late Wednesday night, gums still bleeding, a fever creeping in from the edges, all bruised and lethargic. I decide to call home. Laura answers; she's the only one there.

There is not much to say.

I am a little lonely, a little homesick, and that's not the kind of information you necessarily want to offer to your older sister. I'd been out with "da boys" earlier in the evening, Simon, Wayne, Jim, Chris, the five of us moving between a few different pubs, a couple of pints at each. So I'm also a little drunk in addition to all the rest. Because I didn't get the idea to call home until later, and because I wanted to stay up past eleven o'clock to get the cheaper rates, the other thing that I am this Wednesday night is nearly dropping from exhaustion. I can't help but yawn into the phone. I know that if I'm up this late, it's easily three or four o'clock into the next afternoon before I'll manage to get out of bed.

I give Laura the abridged version, the one where I don't share what's really bothering me, why I'm really calling. I tell her about the relentless fatigue, about all of the general, non-specific symptoms. I do not tell her about my many mystery bruises. Even as I lick my teeth and taste more blood, I do not mention anything else.

"I'm just feeling pretty shitty," I say.

She tells me to get some rest. "Drink plenty of fluids, and eat smart. Get some sleep."

"I had mashed potatoes for dinner and beer for dessert. Does that count?"

She laughs.

"Good enough."

I want to tell her more, but not really. I don't want to tell her anything, even though I do.

It is Tuesday, February 20th. I wake up around noon, one o'clock. Twelve or thirteen hours of sleep and I'm still exhausted. I don't care that I've missed both of my classes for the day. One of them had been earlier in the morning, ten o'clock or so, while the other started at noon. I should've at least made it to my second class, but a steady fatigue is beginning to set into my body. I keep telling myself that it's just a bad cold. I mean, the start of a bad cold.

I'm lying in bed, warm and comfortable, not quite ready to get up. Where is the harm in sleeping for a couple more hours? Volleyball practice isn't until later in the afternoon. It is tempting, but I force myself to throw back my comforter, wipe the sleep out of my eyes, shuffle over to the sink.

Cold water. Cold washcloth.Toothbrush, toothpaste. Swish. Spit. Blood.

Blood?

Another spit and this time it is all blood, no toothpaste. I pull up the front of my lip and squint into the mirror. Blood is rolling out of my gums, over my top teeth. I do not put two and two together. There is no immediate association between the gums and the bruising. It does not occur to me that there might be a relationship.

My glums bleed all day. They bleed while I eat a late lunch at the JCR. I try to drink plenty of fluids. You are supposed to do that when you are sick. It also keeps the blood from staining my teeth. At some point in the early evening as the JCR begins to fill for pool and darts and beers, I remember to check my leg for bruising. I sneak off to the bathroom so I can spit more blood into the sink. I sit in one of the stalls and nervously pull down my jeans. The light kind of sucks in the stalls, flickering flourescents. I'm squinting as I carefully check my right leg.

There is nothing. The other bruises I'd written about are still spotted around my legs and feet, but nothing has formed where I'd punched my thigh.

Good. Very, very good.

After writing down all of my symptoms and pounding on my leg, I thought about going to the library on campus. I could have probably found a book in the medical reference section somewhere. It wouldn't have taken much effort to identify common symptoms to common diseases. Tomorrow, I told myself. You really should go to the library tomorrow.

I'd mentioned this to Dad and Jane. We were on the back porch, a favorite spot, drinking sangria. That was one of the best things about staying with them over the summer: Dad would make fresh sangria. He worked out of the house, and would always find time to dice apples into tiny almost-triangles, mixing good white wine with other fresh fruit. I knew that when I walked the handful of blocks from the bus stop, coming back from whatever mindless temp job I'd worked that day downtown, that there would be a never ending supply. The glass pitcher was chilled and seemed endless. The two of us would sit on the back porch until Jane would come home and then she, too, drank with us. It would be cool in the shade.

I told them about how I'd hesitated. I wrote it down. I knew something was wrong and I knew I should check into it, but I kept putting off even the short, simple trip up The Spine to the library. Imagine if I'd ignored my symptoms any longer.

"Why was I so afraid to admit the obvious? Why was I so afraid to go to the doctor?"

"Human nature," Dad says. He spreads butter on a thin round slice of still-warm baguette. "Most people do not want to face the fact that they are not perfect. It is built into the human psyche. Or maybe just the American psyche. We'd much much rather suffer through x, y, and z before acknowledging something is wrong."

Jane laughs.

"Sounds like a guy thing to me."

I chew on a wine-soaked section of orange.

"Mmm," I say, nodding. I don't know what else to say. This thing that had been in the back of my mind has worked its way to the front. It's the feeling I had after hitting my leg, daring it to bruise. As if I had something to prove to myself, all alone in that tiny concrete room, knowing, absolutely knowing that nothing was wrong with my body simply because I didn't want there to be anything wrong. Why bother going to the doctor when you're so confident of your health?

"Hmm," I say again, closing my eyes, remembering the invincibility of a twenty year-old.

There's a black screen.

Silence.

Colors slowly bleed in from the sides: an out-of-focus jumble of blues and greens and whites. The camera sharpens. It's a panoramic view, a wide countryside. The hills are damp with recent rain. Imagine the video camera slowly panning across acres of vibrant green farmland. Roll soundtrack: low horns and a rippling piano. An old farmhouse passes by the corner of your eye, a long stone wall. A fine mist hanging the air. It is bright but grey.

The camera stops and focuses on a group of white buildings. They poke out of the top of a low hill. They look a little out of place: very modern and angular, surrounded by the rustic countryside, miles of multi-colored farmland and thatched roofs. Zoom in, now, for a better picture of the buildings.

It's a university campus. There is a visible central path, running the length of the campus, like a spinal cord. The buildings close to one another, a compact design. We're at the south end of campus. A long row of windows face west. The camera continues to zoom in, closer, slowly, closer, until the upper two-thirds of the screen are filled by an open bottom-floor window. A shadowy figure can be seen through the curtain. The soundtrack fades back to silence. White letters appear on the screen:

LANCASTER, ENGLAND. FEBRUARY, 1990.

The camera pushes through the curtains. The room is small. There is a narrow bed up against the near wall, and a kind of combination desk/bookshelf/wardrobe on the other, with maybe three or four feet of space separating the two sides. The door is centered in the wall immediately opposite the window. There is a small sink and mirror next to the door, sandwiched in the tiny space between the end of the wardrobe and the inner wall.

It's not a sink you use for cooking. It's much too small for that. Some nights you come home late after drinking with the boys, and you're flopped onto your bed, staring at the spinning spinning spinning white ceiling, wishing it would stop moving. You know you're not going to be able to stumble all the way down to the hall to the common bathroom. The walls would probably be moving side to side anyway. You maybe shouldn't have had those last two or three shots, but the boys were buying, and you were drinking, and now it's a little too late for regrets.

The small sink in the corner is useful for brushing your teeth -- for checking your hair before you go out at night, and for quick showers if you've overslept -- but it's especially useful for emergency late-night vomiting.

In the middle of this small, non-descript room is a young man. He is sitting at the desk. He's leaned the chair back on two legs, so the back rests up against the bed. His eyes are closed, but the leg he's used to push off from the desk vibrates with nervous energy.

This is his room. This is his story.

My story.

I am wearing shorts and a damp sweat shirt. My shoes are kicked into some corner or another. I have just returned from a quick run. There was a narrow winding road that circled the entire campus, just under a mile. Because my window was on the bottom floor, it was a great path for squeezing in a run at any time of the day. Sometimes I'd double or even triple it. Headphones securely fastened, rain seeping into my arms and shoulders, sharp breaths cutting through the mist.

I'm in decent shape. I've been working at it pretty hard since I've been in England, coming up on six months now. I'm not sucking wind, not out of breath, but I'm still wiped. It doesn't make any sense. I'm sitting at my desk, leaning back onto two chair legs, trying to figure out what's wrong.

I'd been feeling down for at least a few days, but probably closer to a week. Nothing obvious, nothing specific, just a generally higher level of fatigue than I was used to. The way it gets late winter when you can kind of feel a cold coming on, scratchy throat, tired eyes and limbs. It wasn't anything that I was prepared to define as a full-on cold, but it was late February, and I certainly didn't have the best sleeping habits, so, I mean, it could have been anything. A warning shot, I suppose, my body telling me to either get some rest or deal with coughing and sneezing for a couple of weeks.

The run was an attempt to chase the oncoming sickness out of my system. Sometimes you can forget about everything outside of the run; there is nothing but the cool pavement and slow breathing. This was to be a show of strength. Look, body, I'm in charge here, okay, and so we're gonna go running tonight, even in the rain, and you're not gonna bitch or complain or get sick. Understand?

But I'm back from the run and I'm still tired and now I'm feeling even crappier than before. I take a look at my legs. Twist them around so I can see the backs. Then I look at my arms and hands. It's not good. I let the front legs of the chair fall to the ground; the momentum carries my arms over to my desk. I grab my journal from the edge.

Here is how it all begins:

I open my journal, flipping through the pages until I come to a blank page near the end. I scrounge around for a pen, then take a deep breath. My eyes are closed. I'm deliberating. Do I really want to write down these fears? To write them down will give them substance, might even make them come true. But not writing them down won't necessarily make them go away.

Sigh. This could go on all night. Eyes open, another deep breath, and then my pen scratches across the empty page.

19 Feb 1990

A bruise on the outside of my right calf; a bruise that swells up around the ring finger knuckle on my right hand; a couple of bruises on the upper back part of both legs; a healthy bruise on my waist where Si Shaw pinched me (at least that one is explainable). A new bruise, strong, on my left foot. Small red spots on both feet that crawl a little ways up my shins. A sore on the inside of my mouth.

I don't know what is going on here, and I'm scared. Not scared enough to go to the doctor and say "oh, look, I've got a bunch of Mystery Bruises," but scared enough to write this down. I don't know. Maybe it's nothing. But my body is falling apart on me and I don't like it.

Shit. This is just for the record: as of 19 Feb 1990 I am frightened because things are happening to me that I can't explain away.

What if? I ask myself. What if it's this, what if it's that?

I try to think of diseases that would make you bruise easily. The only word that comes to mind is hemophilia. Weak blood or something. I'm not even sure. My legs are still tingling from the run. I rub my hands across the unblemished tops of my thighs. Inspiration comes quickly. I know what to do about the what ifs.

A test.

I could test myself, test whether or not I really have been bruising easily. Simple enough. I push myself back from the desk and stretch out my right leg, making sure to flex. I kind of point my toe. Calf and upper thigh both tighten. See, now, it makes absolute sense to me that I were to punch my thigh several times -- good, hard hits -- and it remains blemish-free, then clearly everything is okay. The journal entry becomes something to laugh about, something forgettable. Ha-ha, stupid paranoid Robert.

If a bruise does form, well, fuck. I don't know. Not that it makes a difference. Mind over matter, right? I won't let my body bruise because I don't want it to.

I make a fist. A good one. I focus on a spot on the middle of my thigh, a couple of inches below my shorts. I pound it. Twice. Three times. I use all sides of my fist, pounding with the bottom, then with my knuckles. I crook my pointer finger out in order to make a tiny knob. Again and again, and one last time. It hurts.

Good.

I'm happy.

My leg throbs red. I'm smiling as I stand up, thinking how clever I've been. This will be a good test. One day is the deadline. Twenty-four hours. I will give it one day to turn into a bruise.

When I was in the hospital, both sets of parents encouraged me to take notes, keep a journal, anything to help me to be able to remember what we were going through. There were so many free hours, so many days where I did nothing but move from my bed to my bathroom and back again. Just jot down some details, they suggested.

My sister's best friend had given me a Walkman during my first month. It was the kind that you could use to record stuff into.

"I know you've been tired," she said. "But you can still speak into this if you want. You know. To preserve the memories."

Another friend -- a long-time friend and former secretary of my mother's -- had also gone shopping. Everybody, it seemed, was on the same page. She'd picked out a hard cover notebook with a marbled blue cover and clean blank pages for writing, and a new Waterman (ball point, not fountain) for writing.

I appreciated all of it. Really. But I was always so damn tired.

"Besides," I told them, individually, collectively, "How could I possibly forget? This is the sort of experience that you just don't forget."

"No, no," they would respond. "That's not what we meant. Of course you'll never forget that you had leukemia. But you might just maybe forget the name of one particular doctor. Not all of them, but maybe just one or two. Or the man who worked in Food Services, the one with the vast personal library of movies, classics, bringing a new one to you every day with your lunch. You might forget what he looks like, his name, the different movies he'd brought.

"Even the way your chest felt, remember, when it was swollen with blood? These things. These specific things are the kinds of details you are likely to forget."

"Not to worry," I'd told them. I was twenty, twenty-one years old, as confident as you can be when you're flat on your back in a hospital bed.

"Don't worry," I'd said. "I'll remember everything."

Wrong.

I remember that I survived. I remember only a few of the most lucid dreams. Names have slowly disappeared behind a dark wall of fog. Specifics, for the most part, elude me. Or maybe I just haven't made sufficient attempts to dredge my memory yet.

One of my first doctors -- tall, young, square-jawed and rugged attractive -- told my mother that some of the drugs would make me forget.

"They are primarily to fight infection," he'd said. "Understand, though, that in addition to helping his body fight infections, they will also affect his memory. And it's not such a bad trade-off. There are some things that are better forgotten."

This will be my attempt to remember. I will write. I will chase my memories and capture them on paper. Memories like Jackson Pollack. A burst of color there, a dribble of paint, more splashes in the corner because that blue reminds me of this blue, and suddenly it is a complete picture. Rarely do my memories progress in linear fashion; I doubt that this will either. For that I ask your patience.

This is an experimental writing tool. Blogging is an excellent way to write a little bit, every day. That's all fine and good, except that there's something that I've been meaning to write about for the better part of ten years now. So instead of finding links (and interesting articles, and humorous anecdotes) to fill my calendar day after day, I will try to piece together my own history with leukemia.

As much as I want the story to be linear -- and as much as I realize that the finished product most likely will follow in chronological order -- I can't command my mind to remember it the way I want to write it.

So I will bite off a little bit here and a little bit there. I will categorize the memories. That's what matters. Because I expect to be writing exclusively about the past, the current calendar seems less than useful. I may change my mind about this, the further I get into documenting my history. But for now, everything goes to a category. The home page will still retain recent work, but archived "posts" all belong to a greater whole.

For that matter, I reserve the right to edit any post, for any reason. I will be using a blogging tool at the same time that I fly against some blogging "conventions." No calendar, for example, and when you view my "categories" (i.e. the Table of Contents), the display order is reversed, so it should read the way the story unfolded.

'Nuff said. Time to build some back story.

I had leukemia, okay. I had it and now I don't and that should be that. Only it's not. It's a memory that won't go away. Not a haunting memory, not a slow motion replay of a rear-end collision where you find yourself clenching your arms against the seat, looking back over your shoulder for the too-fast car that isn't there. No. Leukemia is vague with occasional flashes of coherence. It is a constant hum.

Back in the summer of 1992, I would be sitting on the back porch with Dad and Jane, all of us sharing sections from the thick Sunday paper, arguing over who would get the comics first, when a palpable memory would surprise me. I would not be expecting it, and the memories were still so fresh.

Perhaps one of my legs had fallen asleep, or the coffee had cooled slightly, a tight bitter taste. Something: a glint of sunlight reflecting off of Green Lake down the hill. Anything.

There would be a sudden flash in my brain, telling me that the tingling sensation is exactly the way my legs felt after seven weeks in a hospital bed, emaciated, weak and thin. They throbbed when I tried walking up the stairs at home. That exact sensation would come crashing down on my head: sitting in a comfortable chair on the back porch, warm morning sun, good coffee, all of that, but my legs are weak and tired and in so much fucking pain.

I'd stare through the newspaper.

And then I'd be tasting the chemo again, tasting it bad like it was during the first round. Or maybe I'd feel a sudden rush, a hot spurt in my veins of something, I don't know what or why, and I'd be flat on my back in a subterranean hospital room, one of many faceless nurses standing at my side. She is pushing iodine into my bloodstream -- fuck! Why the fuck is it so hot all of a sudden? -- so the images from the CAT scan will be clearer. fucking mystery fevers out of nowhere again, again, only this time we're pretty sure they're coming from somewhere inside my skull.

These had been real. It's not fair to call them memories. It'd be an early summer morning in 1992, pretty much two full years since I'd last been in the hospital, but the colors would be so clear, the smells, the sounds, that nasty metallic taste, the quiet fucking tears that need to be blinked away before Dad or Jane might notice.

The constant hum of leukemia would transform into a brief shout.

Pay attention, it says. Do not forget me. I can make your body remember, even if your mind wants to forget.

Maybe it's 1992; I would be talking with Mom. We'd stand in the open kitchen at the new house, the cleaner, newer, more spacious house that she and Paul had moved into after Laura and I had gone away to our respective colleges. Mom is working on a grocery list, standing in front of the refrigerator with a small notepad, opening and closing cupboards almost at random. I'd be leaning up against the corner by the double sinks, swishing a glass of water around, listening to the ice clank against the sides, asking her what she thinks about insurance. We've talked about this fairly often since graduation: it concerns me, my inability to find insurance with such an ominous pre-existing condition. COBRA won't last forever. What am I supposed to do when I finally get a real job?

I'm not even paying much attention to what I'm saying, just random questions for her to field. She's The Mom, the solid, strong business woman. She knows these things. But suddenly she'd start crying. Real tears, running fast, and they would make me uncomfortable.

"I'm sorry," she would say. "It still surprises me how quickly they come. Just when I think I have it under control..."

"I'm sorry..."

"Don't be sorry, Robert. It's me."

Her memories, I think, are much more vivid than mine. Or perhaps they are simply that much more painful. More painful to be on the outside looking in, unable to do anything but worry, unable to dab peroxide on a skinned knee. Cancer is one thing that a mother cannot kiss and make better.

But not for lack of trying.