11.04.03 - 4:57 p.m.

I'm not particularly adept at articulating my feelings in such a way that truly illuminates them. I'm much better when words are drifting through my head like subterranean fish, blind and pale, with strange sucker-mouths and a faint, eerie glow all their own: strange and apparently aimless, but, well, with masked, unknowable purpose. Of course, that's a helluva lot to put on a fish. I'm sure the real subterranean fish are suckers like the rest of us, floating around in the cool water searching for their next meal or their next approximation of a f'. Food, sex and death baby.

Sometimes, even when its swollen, the whole world seems flat. Flatter, in fact, than Kansas or a pancake (apparently, pancakes are proportionally more variable than Kansas, although I'm not really sure that's a fair comparison or a worthwhile use of limited funds for scientific inquiry. Then again, apparently we use limited funds for a variety of silly things, as Sixty Minutes' story on the Ig Noble awards tends to show.). Flattened: nothing new beneath the sun or moon. Nothing new at all.

The fact that it is - strangely enough - a perfect, perfectly lovely day - does not inspire me to any paeans to Indian Summer - surely, the perfect time of year - bleh. Maybe I just need more exercise.

Or maybe I just need a good cry. A good cry, a better cry. Crying is necessary and cathartic and when you're upset and there is nothing in the world (short of a true miracle) that can make it better, there's nothing like it. I had a semi-good cry this morning, while/after talking to my dad. It included increased snot production (dear authors and/or directors, etc: when someone really cries, snot is usually a byproduct. Only in rare instances is snot not a byproduct. Crying in real life never looks like crying in the movies, and I find this disappointing. Not that I really want to see snot swinging from Nicole Kidman's perfect nose, but...) but was cut too short because - duh - I was in the office. I considered leaving for the day so I could get a good cry in before the emotion drained away and left me feeling as flat as I seem to be feeling lately, but I had too much work waiting for me to get away with it.

Mom had her follow-up appointment with her gynecological oncologist yesterday, and also an appointment with another gynecological oncologist at the local university's medical school, for a second opinion.

So, of course I called last night to talk to Mom about her appointments, to find out what the doctors had said, and to see how she was feeling. Mom was upbeat, more or less, and said that the second doctor agreed with the first regarding the type of chemo, although he said he preferred to give it on four-week cycles because he finds that his patients tolerate the chemotherapy better that way. She also said that although the first doctor believed that the cancer originated in her uterus, the second doctor found the pathology reports inconclusive. He though that Mom might have two primary tumors (uterine and ovarian) per the pathology report, but in either case, he felt that the treatment was the same. After the appointments, Mom said that she and my aunt - her sister - went shopping at Bath and Body Works, and between the promotions and her coupons, she had a present for me. Oh, yeah: there was also a story about how the resident thought that she shouldn't go to the beginning of one of her conferences next weekend if Dad drove her, but both oncologists thought she should go if she felt up to it and wanted to do it, as long as she took breaks about every 1.5 hours to walk around. I talked to Susie for a bit, too.

That was the conversation. Not bad, right? I mean, whatever: not bad, an okay day, everything and everyone is holding up well, they're maintaining composure until Susie leaves tomorrow and what-ever.

This morning, I called my Dad to coordinate schedules, figuring that I would go home to visit some night this week, since Mom is planning to go to the conference this weekend. Also, I told my mom that I'd like to repot her African violets and kalanchoe (I've figured out why the latter aren't doing so well: she's overwatering them. They're too moist. They'll start stem-rotting soon.) and so on. So, anyway.

Innocent question: I ask Dad how things are going.

"How are things going, Dad?" (That's me, paraphrased.)

Dad: long pause. "Not good."

Dad proceeds to tell me his version of yesterday's story. He drove Mom in to the first appointment, and sat in the waiting room. He wanted to be with Mom when the doctor discussed his findings with her, and figured they'd call him back after they had taken out her stitches (Mom had half her stitches taken out, though I'm not sure which half. She had a radical hysterectomy, so the incision was rather long.), but they didn't do that. Apparently, they didn't talk for long, and the doctor was eager to hear what the other doctor thought about the path reports, Dr. Schiano's plan, etc.

So, the trio - Mom, Dad, and Aunt Susie - trooped from one city to the other for the second appointment early yesterday afternoon. The second doctor agreed with the first, apparently, and began discussing the side effects of chemotherapy with mom. Thinking that the appointment was winding down, Dad left. He had a class that he couldn't miss that afternoon. He'd been there, Susie was there, Mom was okay, and...

...yeah. Apparently, after Dad left Mom decided to ask the doctor what her chances were. The first doctor specifically adjured her to NOT ask about statistics and NOT look things up on the internet and NOT ask about stages, but she did it anyway. Dad said he would've, well - stepped in somehow, had she asked that. Anyway, the second doctor told her that the five year survival rate for her cancer was 15%. Which doesn't jive, exactly, with what cancer.gov lists as the five-year survival rate for endometrial cancer at stage III (60%), and so on, but: statistics are statistics, and I still don't know what she has if the doctors don't even know, and certainly not when I'm hearing the information second and third hand. So, yeah: bad question to ask, and one that obviously depressed her.

As if that wasn't bad enough, Susie started haranging Mom about a third opinion at Fox Chase Cancer Center. Dad had earlier talked Mom out of getting a third opinion there the day after Thanksgiving (we always had Thanksgiving at my grandmother's house, and - almost to a woman - my grandmother's friends enjoined us to continue the tradition, that it had been her favorite holiday, and she was always so happy and so proud that we all had Thanksgiving together every year. So, now that grandma has passed (it really is a better term than dead, isn't it?), we're rotating Thanksgiving among the families. This year, we're in Philly.) because he thought it would be pointless. By then, she will have already started chemotherapy, and what would she do if they were to recommend something else? If she really wanted a third opinion, he thought, she should have it before starting chemotherapy.

(My opinion: I don't care. Dad may be right, but who cares? If she's satisfied enough to start chemo based on the two doctors around here - both affiliated with medical schools, different medical schools - WVU and Marshall - but wants a third opinion in Philly later - to assure herself, to reassure Susie, for whatever reason, there's not reason NOT to go. Bleh.)

So, anyway: Dad talked Mom out of that plan. I didn't challenge him, and I don't know. I mean, he's right, but who cares, right?

So, anyway: Mom decided that Schiano and Oakley were enough for her to make a decision, and that she didn't want a third opinion. Personally, I'm a bit troubled that the pathologist couldn't pinpoint the origin of the tumors, but what the hell do I know? Maybe that happens all the time. Anyway, they removed pretty much everything, so its not like she has a hidden fallopian tumor still lurking in her body.

Otherwise, Both doctors agreed on the basics of the diagnosis and the chemo regimen, and the timing can be adjusted later if it proves to much for her. Susie, however, was insistent that Mom go to Fox Chase for another opinion.

And so: Susie and Mom apparently had a knock-down drag-out full-fledged, horrible fight in front of Dr. Oakley. Dad - obviously - heard about it second hand from Mom. I heart it third-hand from Dad. I guess Mom and Susie didn't want to upset me, or something. How bizarre is that, anyway? Seriously: Susie is almost sixty years old. Wouldn't she be capable, by now, of occasionally shutting the f' up and letting my mother be? I realize her concern is out of love, but this isn't her problem, and it isn't her body, and it isn't her uterus or her cancer or anything.

Shut. Up. Already.

It's perfect fodder for a short story, but it's not a story I can bring myself to write. Maybe that's my problem with writing, real writing - I can't - perhaps won't - plunder the most painful parts of my life for good material because I don't want to hurt the people I care about. Or myself. Self-protection has got to be at the heart of it.

Also, as well as I know the pair of them, I cannot - for the life of me - imagine how that fight played out. What would they say? How would it escalate? Once they began to escalate it, how would they ever figure out how to shut up? Susie and Mom are very different when it comes to facial structure, but both share a certain unnameable something when they're in a rage. And rage is the only approprite word for the most virulent and sweeping expressions of their anger. They both look like bulls in the ring - mouth flattened, cheeks just puffed out, nostrils flaring, and rolling eyes narrowed and animal-flat. There's no reasoning with them in such moods. No matter what you say, no matter how you negotiate, no matter what you try, you can only make things worse, you can only make them madder. Heck, sometimes I think the very reasonableness of your response makes 'em madder, something like, how CAN you be so calm about all this?

I should know, I suppose. I spent at least half a lifetime negotiating such moods. It wasn't always pretty. But there it is, and there Susie is, sure that she is right and if she just shouts a little bit louder Mom will agree - because Mom doesn't disagree, she just doesn't understand, or something like that - and here is Mom, who just heard that the five-year survival rate is 15% (and let us face it: after hearing about the five-year survival rate, who listens to the very smart, very wise caveat that statistics are just that: statistics. They don't apply to individual cases and shouldn't be extrapolated as evidence of one's "chances" or anything similar.) and who is still recovering from major surgery and who has suffered Susie's often overbearing company for more than a week, and there's nothing to do in response to a scene like that, even related third-hand over the telephone, but bawl until snot runs out of your nose.