The Sound Between the Notes by Barbara Linn Probst

Author:Barbara Linn Probst [Probst, Barbara Linn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: She Writes Press
Published: 2021-04-14T22:00:00+00:00

When she got home, Susannah went straight to her laptop: the other keyboard, as James called it, the one that might hold the answer to the first. She’d already found the natural treatments, the ones Aaron had scoffed at. Maybe there was something else to be found.

She typed Dupuyten’s contracture treatment into her browser. Pages of hits. Needle aponeurotomy, fasciectomy, collagenase, things she already knew. She clicked through the sites. Nothing. Maybe doctors outside the U.S. had another approach? She hadn’t tried that yet. More links. She opened one at random, a center in the UK. It listed treatment by stages of the disease. She remembered Evan Chu telling her that she wasn’t even at Stage One. Well, she would be soon, if she did nothing. She scrolled to the paragraph about treatment at Stage One.

Stage One: nodules and cords, no contracture. All right, close enough. Maybe they defined the stages differently in Europe.

She kept reading, and a word leaped from the screen that she hadn’t seen before. Radiotherapy. “Radiotherapy is only effective while nodules are growing and cords may be developing. This is often accompanied by aches, tingling, and other atypical sensations.”

I can’t make the top notes sing. Did that count as an atypical sensation?

She leaned closer. “Radiation can be effective for keeping straight fingers straight, but it cannot straighten a finger that is already bent. Thus, in order for radiotherapy to be effective, it must be given in the early stages of the disease, when nodules are small and no additional symptoms have appeared. The chief obstacle to radiotherapy is that it is rare for someone to seek medical help at this early stage.”

But she had. The article was talking about her.

“By the time most people seek help, the disease has progressed beyond the point where radiation can be effective. Hence, it is seldom an option that physicians consider.”

Her pulse racing, Susannah skimmed through the details. When given at the pre-contracture stage, low-dose radiation was a simple, painless procedure. One minute, once a day for five days. You could even drive home afterward. No swelling and tearing, no nighttime splints.

The answer. The way to stop her traitorous DNA from sabotaging her chance to show the world what she was, or could be. And she’d found it herself.

All she had to do was find a radiologist who knew how to treat Dupuytren’s and make him see her right now, while she was still a candidate. She would explain why it was so important. If she had to, she’d get Leo to pull more strings.

Suddenly, she was angry—at Leo, Aaron, all of them, for being so sure that there was nothing to do except keep an eye on it, wait until she got worse. She had known that couldn’t be right, yet she’d listened to them because they seemed so certain, and she’d wasted precious time.

Well, no more. It was her concert. Her future.

She jumped up, eager to call Aaron and tell him what she had discovered. He’d be happy for her, glad to be wrong if it meant a chance for her to keep playing.

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