One Week Later, Now and Then

A Rainy Monday, 28 Mar 2016
Yesterday, Easter Sunday, was a hard day for me; I cried several times during our three hours of church meetings. My chest literally felt heavy.
I believe David’s spirit and personality lives on right now; I believe David's body will be resurrected. But I hurt, badly. Emotional pain is like a broken arm: I believe it will heal but that doesn’t change the intensity and immediacy of the pain. One of our LDS church leaders, Sister Neill Marriott, has described her family’s experience when their 21-year-old daughter, Georgia, died after being struck by a truck while on her bicycle:

Following Georgia’s mortal death, our feelings were raw, we struggled, and still today we have moments of great sorrow, but we hold to the understanding that no one ever really dies. Despite our anguish when Georgia’s physical body stopped functioning, we had faith that she went right on living as a spirit…

 Yes, that’s what it is: raw like an open wound. It hurts to touch it; it throbs even without being touched.

I’m grateful that I can feel and grieve. It’s all part of mother-love. Let me assure you, I have more good days than bad, but yesterday and today are pretty bad.


Wednesday, 26 March 2014
Starting out early, we drive the familiar highways down the East Coast: the Mass Pike, I-84 through Connecticut, I-95 through New Jersey, a snippet of Delaware, then Maryland. The famous Washington Beltway into Virginia. With family in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, we’ve driven the roads many times.
David’s flight from Detroit lands at 3:32 p.m. at Dulles Airport in Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C. Jim drops me off at the terminal and goes to the cell phone lot. I stand near the moving baggage carousel, watching the double door where David and his escort, Brent Mann, will emerge after their long flights from Korea via Detroit. I’m excited to see him, but when I reach out to affectionately take his arm he pulls it brusquely away and growls. He has phlebitis from the IVs in the Seoul hospital and his arm is painfully swollen.
We wait for the duffel bags, which Brent grabs, and head out to the curb. Jim picks us up and we drive I-495 to Walter Reed Military Medical Center at 8901 Rockville Pike in Bethesda, MD. In my youth it was the National Naval Medical Center and I remember seeing its distinctive grey limestone tower on TV when LBJ (Lyndon Baines Johnson, 36th POTUS) got his gall bladder out. Now our son, David is admitted there.



David settles into his private room and we spend the night with my brother Steve and his wife Maria. One tender mercy among countless others is that Steve and Maria live just two miles away from Walter Reed. They generously open their home to us and we settle into their comfortable guest room.

27 March 2014
Not satisfied to accept the Korean bone marrow biopsy results, the doctor performs David’s second biopsy. This involved screwing a large hollow needle into his hip bone (ilium) to remove a sample of spongy bone marrow and then removing some liquid bone marrow. The preliminary results confirm the Korean diagnosis: acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Further test results will be available in a week or two but this is enough information to continue the chemotherapy begun in Korea.
David eats three meals and feels well, but moves slowly and lies down most of the day. He is assigned four doctors: an oncologist, a hematology fellow (receiving specialized training after a residency), an internal medicine doctor, and a resident. There is also a charge nurse, a regular nurse, and a technician.

28 Mar 2014
David has a port installed surgically into his chest so that chemo and blood products can be delivered directly into the large vein (vena cava), which can handle infusion easier than veins in the arms.
Jim and I read the informational pages about the chemotherapy drugs, daunorubicin and cytaribine. One serious side effect: infertility. When Jim expresses deep concern, Ensign Frank, all decked out in a waterproof green gown and thick gloves to protect her from the extremely toxic drugs, scurries out to get the doctor. He arrives and explains to us that: 1) AML is deadly, 2) powerful chemotherapy is the best option available, and 3) David received the same drugs in Korea, so the damage is already done. Chemotherapy commences.
From the fifth floor stairwell window I can see the white marble towers and golden spires of the LDS Washington Temple, where Jim and I were married in 1979. It’s glorious at night.