The Cost of Hope by Bennett Amanda

Author:Bennett, Amanda [Bennett, Amanda]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: Itzy, Kickass.to
ISBN: 9780679604846
Amazon: B005OCYR3K
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2012-06-05T04:00:00+00:00

13

Something terrible is about to happen, and there is nothing you can do about it.

Try to conjure that feeling.

An out-of-control truck speeds toward a child. A bridge jumper throws one leg over the rail. A train hurtles at 150 miles an hour toward a school bus stalled on the track. And there is nothing you can do about it.

The feeling comes to me in dreams. My babies are in the front seat of our careening car. I am in the back. And I can’t get to the steering wheel or brakes. Recently I had such a dream: Something terrible is happening to Georgia. I don’t know what it is. It is something awful. But I can’t move a limb to reach her, or even open my eyes to see her. There’s nothing I can do. My sister, who is a scientist, says it’s only an illusion, caused by waking up in the wrong order, while some of the brain is still locked in REM sleep.

It doesn’t change the feeling.

It’s how I feel for the next three and a half years. From August 2002 to December 2005, Terence and I do nothing—nothing—to treat his cancer.

Nothing.

We do nothing because a new doctor we have found—a kidney cancer expert at Cleveland Clinic—has told us to do nothing. We have sought out and chosen Dr. Ronald Bukowski ourselves. We trust Dr. Bukowski. We think his advice is right. Even today I think his advice was mostly right.

• • •

We met with Dr. Bukowski in August, before planning our trip to Italy. On Saturday, August 17, 2002, we packed up the Volvo wagon and drove from Lexington to the Cleveland Clinic where Dr. Bukowski, one of the world’s experts on kidney cancer, would tell us what to do next.

Both of us had grown to worship the Beatles, and we visited the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, marveling at the display of John Lennon’s guitars and handwritten manuscripts. We made this a family trip, but really we were in Cleveland to see Dr. Bukowski. I was drawn to one exhibit in the museum—a passage by Yoko Ono describing a bicycle ride she and John and their son Sean take—and I thought: How ordinary their life together seems. In the middle of the room there was something else: Yoko had loaned to the exhibit the glasses John was wearing on the day he was shot. A matter-of-fact line from the exhibit caught me in the gut: After he died at St. Luke’s–Roosevelt in New York, they gave her his belongings in a paper bag. I think: A PAPER BAG!

We haven’t abandoned Dr. Pierce in Lexington. The records I collect show that we will have several more appointments with him. Still, like most other family oncologists, Dr. Pierce doesn’t see very many kidney cancer patients a year and has never seen collecting duct before. Even Dr. Pierce agrees that Terence’s odd disease needs some expert attention.

As I search out the alternatives I am drawn to

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