The Perfect Marriage(22)
“That just makes me feel cheap, Haley.”
“Then it’s good you got that phone call, I guess. Sounds like you’ll be feeling richer any day now.”
7
It wasn’t until three days after their doctor’s visit that Owen’s mother came into his room, sat on the edge of his bed, and finally told him what he already knew.
“I’ve got a good news–bad news situation to share with you, Owen. The bad news is that there’s been a recurrence of the leukemia. But the much more important good news is that there’s a treatment that will cure it. You’re going to get a transplant in which your bone marrow is replaced by someone else’s that doesn’t create leukemia cells.”
The whole time she was talking, his mother managed to maintain a smile. Owen knew that there was nothing to be happy about. Since the moment he left the doctor’s office, Owen had been googling like crazy the possible treatments for a recurrence of AML.
It took him a beat too long to realize that if his mother were actually imparting new information, as she thought, then he should have said something or at least changed his expression.
“Who’s going to be the donor?” he asked.
“That’s still to be determined. Your father or me, hopefully. If not, we’ll go to the national database. But don’t worry. We’ll definitely find someone compatible.”
The American Red Cross, or whatever the website was where he had read about this, had a contrary view. According to them, it wasn’t easy to find a donor, and the best chance was a sibling, which he didn’t have.
“Okay,” he said, largely because he didn’t know what else to say.
“You, me, and Dad are going to see a new doctor tomorrow. The doctor in charge of the treatment program. So, you’ll miss school. Another piece of good news, right?”
He actually didn’t want to miss school. The orchestra was rehearsing for the opera, and he was in the running to be first violin. As soon as this thought hit him, however, he realized it would never come to pass. A bone marrow transplant meant he’d be missing most of the rest of the school year. All those things that seniors had to wait four years to achieve—final concerts, the senior prom, hanging out with your friends—were not going to happen for him. Nevertheless, he smiled, because he knew his mother was trying.
The next morning, Owen sat between his parents in Dr. Cammerman’s office at Memorial Sloan Kettering, which his mother had already told him several times was the premier cancer hospital in the country, if not the world. If their new doctor was as big a deal as Owen’s mother claimed, he certainly didn’t have the office to back it up. There was barely enough space for the third chair to fit across from the desk.
The man himself didn’t look any more impressive than his surroundings. Bald, with a goatee and oversize glasses. If it weren’t for the fact that his white lab coat had DOCTOR stenciled above the pocket, Owen might have assumed he was a janitor.
“The procedure is going to be difficult, Owen,” Dr. Cammerman said. “So let me apologize in advance for the things we’re going to be putting into your body and the way it’s going to make you feel. But know that it’s all for the good. We do it so, at the end of the process, you can go on and live as normal and productive a life as you would if you’d never heard the word leukemia.”
His mother smiled at him, and his father nodded approvingly. Owen wanted to scream at them to cut the shit already. He was so beyond tired of the lies that people peddled in an effort to make him reject reality. But he kept his emotions in check, a frozen, neutral expression on his face suggesting that he believed the doctor’s every word.
“I’m sure you want to know what this is going to look like,” Dr. Cammerman said, now with a smile of his own. “First step is we need to do some more tests to confirm that you’re eligible for the transplant. I’m not going to bore you with all the things we’re looking for, or seeking to rule out, but I can say that I’m almost certain that when we’re done with that process, we’re going to conclude that you’re a good candidate. But as you’ll hear me say a lot, there are no guarantees on any of this. So, I can only tell you something after I know it. I can’t predict beforehand.”
“Okay,” Owen said, even as he was thinking that the first thing the doctor had said—that if he underwent the treatment, it would all turn out okay in the end—was precisely the type of prediction he’d just said he’d never make.
“Good,” Dr. Cammerman said with another smile. “So, let’s assume that you’re a viable candidate. What comes next is we put in a central venous catheter, which we call a CVC. It can be done as outpatient surgery, which means you will not have to stay overnight in the hospital. It won’t hurt. The CVC allows us to more easily draw blood and give you medicine. It stays in you during the entirety of your treatment, and even for a little bit after it’s all over. We take it out once your new stem cells are firmly in place and starting to reproduce the way we want.”
“Okay,” Owen said again, wanting this entire thing to be over.
“Good. It’s easiest to think about the procedure as occurring in two phases. Stage one has a fancy name called myeloablation.”
Owen knew all about myeloablation too. The internet had practically made him an AML specialist.