Bronchoscopy

Pulling my catheter is a last resort. It's the last thing any of us wants to do, but we've seriously looked everywhere and the fevers keep coming back.

We will check one final time, a new test -- something I'd never heard of before, a bronchoscopy -- to see if we could approach the problem from a different angle. X-rays afford a view of the inside of my body, but from the outside. They're flat. They're all black and white and shades of gray, and mistakes can be made. Of course we check from the front and the back, and from each side, me, wearily, standing and turning, turning, turning, turning, but lung infections can still hide from the x-ray technician.

The bronchoscopy give us something much, much better: a view from the inside, in color, live action. Better technology, better quality images, better everything.

All of these improvements do not come without a price. The procedure itself is nowhere near as simple as an x-ray, which requires little more of me than simply standing and turning, over and again. It won't be the worst medical procedure I'll need to deal with over the course of the summer, not by a long shot, but I'd be hard pressed to think of anything much worse up to this point.

Again, it's all relative.

I am admittedly not the best with getting stuff down my throat. The chemo has made it worse. I'm making strides, swallowing pills, drinking juice, but I'm still not at all good with solids foods, solid anything. So the prospect of a long tube snaking down my throat is pretty disconcerting. It'll be thin and long, the tube -- at least two, maybe three feet long. It needs to be able to be passed through my open mouth and down my neck at which point the doctor will work some magic, using the tiny fiber-optic camera on the end to find an angle into my right lung.

It's a flexible tube. Space age materials, I'm sure. All very high-tech.

The doctor had told me his name, earlier, and I've already forgotten it. He explained that even though the tube was flexible, all fancy and expensive, it wouldn't move on it's own. It was spaghetti-like, but not spaghetti, understand? You ever do that trick? In college, just goofing around, where you get a long strand of spaghetti and you swallow it halfway so part of it's just dangling out your mouth? You can bend over the table and wiggle it around; because the other half is in your body, it's not going anywhere. Half the table says sick while the other half laughs, so instead of just eating the thing you pull it back out.

So he's navigating this thing up and down my neck, in and out of my lungs, cameras rolling. This is the price we need to pay for higher quality images -- the best quality images -- of my lungs. Infections? You there? We'll find you if you are.

I'm breathing.

I am trying to breathe.

Relax, Robert. Just. Just. Relax.

It's fifteen minutes. Thirty. We only want to do this test once. The doctor will be precise and methodical, checking and double-checking. Right lung, left lung, back to the right, then left, just to be sure. It's half an hour of a nurse at my side -- used to this role, I'm sure -- holding my hand, a steady presence, whispering it's okay, relax, relax whenever my muscles suddenly tighten. My throat convulsively constricts around the tube.

Shhh, she says, wiping the tears from my cheeks. Everything's going to be okay. Everything will be fine.