Stations of the Heart: Parting with a Son by Richard Lischer

Author:Richard Lischer [Lischer, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-96054-2
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Published: 2013-01-21T16:00:00+00:00

I came home that evening buoyed by something new and unexpected. It was the same sense of lift Adam must have felt when he had the t-shirts made. Until that time I was completely ignorant of hope, perhaps because I had never been so desperately in need of it. But that night I momentarily lost my fear of hope, which is nothing other than the fear of death, and remembered again the Bible’s quaint promise, “Hope maketh not ashamed.” I will not be ashamed of my hope. When this new thing took over in me it was like nothing I had ever felt; for as long as I had it I was unnaturally energized, like the ninety-pound weakling who with a rush of adrenaline manages to lift a car off the accident victim. It wasn’t that I believed Adam would be cured, but in defiance of all the evidence I was positive he would survive and our family would remain whole.

For reasons I can’t explain, I don’t regret the hope. I would never delete it from the spring of 2005 or from the larger human repertoire. But, Team Adam notwithstanding, his medical treatment proved a disappointing story. He bravely followed his schedule of treatments, but they never yielded a decent plot with a rising and falling action or a dramatic turning point. The curtain was never raised on much of anything and therefore it never fell. Whatever was going on in his body missed its appointment with our hope. They never met. One day, as we left a meeting with the oncologist, Jenny said, “It’s never good news, is it.”

And even if we dared to hope, there was always the radiology report. Adam had unwisely asked for a printout, and the radiologist on duty had unwisely given it to him, as if the patient’s right to know includes the right to thumb through his own death warrant. It was one thing to hear “small tumors on the side” and “spots on the liver” or even the radiologist’s spoken verdict, “incurable,” delivered to Adam and Jenny with utensil-like efficiency. It was quite another to see it in black and white. In addition to finding “dramatic” progression in the thoracic region, brain, and liver, the report counted up the bones from his clavicle to his pelvis in which the cancer had also appeared. Adam and Jenny read the document soberly word by word. Then they treated it in the only way possible, as a contaminant that must not remain in their home. One day in May, Adam gave it to me.

Tracy and I did feel something like hope after meeting with another Duke oncologist who specialized in primary brain tumors (Adam’s was metastatic). He was everything Adam’s primary doctor was not: brash, abrupt, sure of his genius, but less polished in his speech. He was also older, with a record of astonishing successes. A colleague referred us to him for a second opinion with the ultimate recommendation: “He’s been on 60 Minutes.” He projected just the mix of confidence and compassion we were looking for.

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