It's Really Nice...

...to be somebody's success story.

Not just contributing to his/her success story, not just representing her/his success story, but actually being the walking/talking success story. And it occurred to me yesterday that I am that for my medical team.

I had a "routine" visit with my radiation doc yesterday. Just a regular 3-month checkup. And it was, in truth, either a routine visit or an epiphany. As is so often the case, the difference lies not at all in what happened but in how one views what happened.

Okay, here comes the "routine" visit story:

Deb and I went to the doctor's office -- the place where all my radiation treatments took place -- and had a pleasant chat with one of the nurses who took good care of me; and then another chat with the doc himself. He probed my entire neck area and didn't find anything new or unusual, then he looked in my mouth, then he wished Deb and me a Merry Christmas and we shook hands and left. End of story.

Now the epiphany version:

To begin with, as we sat in the front-office waiting area, a lady came in, nodded "hello" to the receptionists, then walked through a door towards the back of the office area. No check-in or name identification. And I understood from her behavior that she had a radiation session scheduled to treat her cancer and there was no need to check in at the front desk. Because she had been there yesterday and the day before and the day before.

I knew this was so because that was my routine a year and a half ago. Every weekday for seven straight weeks. Right past the receptionist and through that same door. And with that recollection came a flood of memories: sitting in the back area waiting for your turn with the radiation machine. The magazines. The coffee machine (which my horribly sore mouth wouldn't let me use). The tray of cookies (ditto). The half-finished jigsaw puzzle on the side table. (Which always seemed to be more-or-less half finished. While waiting your turn in the radiation room, one's job is to find the next one or two fitting puzzle pieces and place it/them into the work done by all the other patients who had been waiting their turn for radiation treatment -- hours ago, days ago. And when the puzzle was almost finished on day X, you could be pretty sure that there would be a new puzzle -- totally disassembled -- on day X+1.)

And I remembered the feeling that this terrible thing that was about to happen to my body -- the treatment -- would, if I were lucky, save my life. So that the machine, after a week or two, became a friend and then a partner in the fight and then a means to salvation.

And then came the recollections of all the wonderful people who had pulled me through this ordeal: the nurses, the radiation technicians, the doctor himself... and my wonderful wife. They were strong for me when I could not be strong for myself.

And just as tears of gratitude and recalled hardship started to well up, Joan -- one of the two nurses primarily responsible for my care back then -- came through a doorway and called my name. She seemed genuinely pleased to see me. And it was -- as it has been for so many months now -- a genuine treat and a blessing to see her.

We got through the business of being weighed and moved on to "How are you feeling?" and "Anything new or unusual going on?" And Deb and I racked our brains trying to come up with something to report. Then Joan reminded us that having nothing to report was a really good thing.

Oh, that's right...

Then Joan told me I looked great, that she wished us a Merry Christmas, and that the doctor would be in shortly. And shortly thereafter, the doc showed up.

It seems every time we visit with this guy, he seems more and more genuinely pleased to see us. I think he likes the fact that I continue to be healthy -- and that he can take some major credit for this. Well that and the fact that I put on a juggling show for him and his staff.

Or maybe he just likes us. Hmmm...

Anyway, after confirming that there were no new symptoms to discuss, his first question to me was about my saliva production. (Which makes sense -- the sort of question a good doctor would ask -- since it was the radiation treatments that permanently disabled the large parotid salivary gland on the left side of my face.) I started to tell him that I normally carry a water bottle everywhere, but had forgotten it this morning. He gently interrupted me to point out that this meant that it wasn't absolutely necessary for me to go everywhere with a bottle of water. (Something which has developed over the last several months. The bottle is reassuring to have, but it's not the necessity I felt it to be six months ago.) He seemed both pleased and relieved: okay, Randy's salivary production is significant if not totally returned to normal. And that's as much as we can expect.

He asked if I was taking good care of my teeth. (Because after my radiation treatments, loss of any tooth will likely mean all the teeth on that row -- that is, upper or lower jaw -- would sooner or later have to be pulled. I don't quite understand this, but my medical team all seem to agree that this is the case.) So I rattled off what I'm doing to protect my teeth and he seemed satisfied.

He felt all around my neck -- left side and right side both thoroughly -- and told me he couldn't find anything new or unusual. Then suggested that I should be probing my neck area the same way fairly frequently. For the same reason that women should perform self examinations on their breasts: get to know "normal" feels like everywhere in the area, so that if anything new shows up, I will know about it quickly. (Don't you just love common sense when you hear it?)

We were running out of things to talk about...

Working to hold up my end of the conversation, I mentioned that I was anxious about almost any illness or unusual event concerning my body. As in: "Good grief, I've got a hangnail. OMG, maybe it's cancerous!"

And the doc got quite animated and said, "That's perfectly natural! You couldn't respond any other way. It will simply take time for those feelings to go away." Then he related the story of having his car rear-ended in an accident and how, for months thereafter, he looked in his rear-view mirror every time he put on the brakes. Once the totally unexpected happens to you, you get anxious about it happening again. Cancer. Car collisions. Whatever.

It was just so nice of him to share that. I told him that, while I knew intellectually that was the case, it made a huge difference to me to hear it from him. So I thanked him.

Then I told him that my chemo doc had said that he had worked very hard to cure me from this aggressive form of cancer and that, if I were to die from a blood clot, he would be angry with me. I thought that might bring a smile, but in fact the doc just looked more earnest and said that sort of thing -- a patient dying from some unrelated cause shortly after being treated was not all that uncommon. And he related (yet another) story about such a circumstance that occurred early in his medical practice. And I could see on his face that the memory of the patient, his treatment, and his untimely demise was still quite fresh for him. And painful.

After some silence, he looked at my charts one more time and mentioned that I had had an MRI back in August which had looked perfectly normal. And that he didn't see any reason to schedule another scan any time soon.

The strongest evidence to date that he feels I'm truly cured. For the long term.

Finally, he sat back in his chair, looked at me -- or actually beamed at me -- and declared me to be "the picture of perfect health."

As he stood up, he wished the two of us Merry Christmas. And would I please schedule another visit in four months. (Bumped up from the previous schedule of three months between visits.)

Then he shook our hands. Both of us. Deb and me. And then he shook them again.

Lately it seems I'm never that far away from tears. But it's always tears of joy. Tears of gratitude. Damn but it's good to be alive!