Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me(49)

“Hold it,” I interrupted, “let me get a pen.”

I did so, and a notepad, and I scribbled what he had just said. “Okay, keep going.”

Oliver started over, his voice now more self-assured: “A month ago, I felt that I was in good health, even robust health. But my luck has run out—last week I learned that I have multiple metastases in my liver…”

From there, Oliver dictated the entire essay, nearly verbatim to the version that would eventually appear in the New York Times, the main difference between them being that his original included longer excerpts from his beloved philosopher, David Hume. It was clear to me that he had been “writing” this essay in his head over the past several days—and now, one perfectly formed paragraph after another spilled forth. It was astonishing. I handwrote, as rapidly as I could, as he spoke, typed it up that night, and brought it back to him the next morning. He spent several days tinkering with it, both Kate and I reviewing drafts, but then he set it aside. Oliver worried that his feelings were perhaps too raw, and felt it was too soon to publish it, given that most of his friends and family members did not yet know his news.

In lieu of any experimental treatments, Oliver made the decision to go ahead with a surgical procedure called an embolization, which would cut off blood supply to the tumors in his liver and therefore kill them off—temporarily (they would inevitably return, he was told). Surgeons would do two separate embolizations, one for each side of the liver, allowing a few weeks of recovery in between procedures. Dramatically lowering the “tumor burden” held the promise of offering him several more months of active life.

The first embolization was scheduled for mid-February. Literally as we waited in the hospital for him to be admitted for surgery, Oliver suddenly turned to Kate and me and said he felt the time was right to send the piece over to the New York Times. Neither of us questioned him; we just said, Okay. I went into a bathroom at the hospital and called our mutual editor at the Times on my cell phone and, confidentially, shared with him the news of Oliver’s terminal diagnosis. After Oliver had been admitted, Kate e-mailed the essay to him, and we heard back almost immediately: They wanted to run the piece the next day. We asked for one extra day—to get Oliver safely through the procedure first—and they agreed. Oliver’s essay “My Own Life” was scheduled for publication on February 19, 2015.





“My Own Life”





NOTES FROM A JOURNAL

2-17-15:

In post-surgery recovery: The only thing that briefly distracts O from the pain is when I read to him from a book on the elements. Cutting off blood supply to the tumors in the liver may sound somewhat benign, but the body revolts with full force against such an intrusion.

He repeatedly tears off his hospital gown because he is in so much pain that even the thin cotton material causes discomfort. The young female nurses act scandalized by this and keep trying to cover him up.

At one point, O yells out in exasperation, “If one can’t be naked in a hospital, where can one be naked?!”

I hear a nurse in the hallway join me in laughter.

I cover his genitals with a washcloth when the morphine finally kicks in and he falls asleep.

It takes until midnight before we get a hospital room.

_____________________

2-24-15—back home after six days in hospital:

“I am going to lie down on the bed, come and talk to me,” O says.

I curl up next to him, an arm over his chest, a leg over his legs. His eyes are closed, and for a moment I think he has fallen asleep, but no: “When you can’t tell where your body ends and the other’s begins, is that primal, or signs of an advanced evolution?”

I pull him in close, his head on my chest.

“A little of both,” I whisper.

_____________________

2-27-15:

I brought O a few of the letters and e-mails written in response to his New York Times essay: I: “How’d it feel to read those?”

O: “Good!”

I: “You have about 800 more to go.”

O: “I’d like to see all of them.”

_____________________

2-28-15:

I looked in on O when I woke at 6:20. To my surprise, he was lying on top of the covers, his hands resting on his belly, and staring at the ceiling. Oh no, has he been like this all night, I thought, sleepless?

He heard me make a movement and noticed I was standing in the doorway.

“I was thinking about the brainstem,” he said in a clear, strong voice.

“Yeah?” I slipped into the room and onto the bed. He put his right arm around me. I could hear his slow, steady heartbeat—the heart of a swimmer.

“Yes, you see—” and, with his eyes closed as if seeing the pages in his mind, he proceeded to describe in the most careful detail the workings of the autonomic nervous system, gradually zeroing in on the topic of “a general feeling of disorder,” a state the body enters when the smallest change—whether intestinal, vascular, hormonal, neurological, cellular, “what have you”—triggers a “cascade of unwellness.” He used migraine to illustrate the concept.

He hardly took a breath for thirty-five minutes. I considered getting up to retrieve the tape recorder, but this might have disturbed the flow of his thinking.

Finally, O came to a pause. “So, you see—just a few morning thoughts.” He chuckled at himself.