Things I've Learned from Dying by David R. Dow

Author:David R. Dow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2014-01-07T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 44

I submitted to the chemo because Katya persuaded me the part of my life I own is exceeded by the sum of what others own, and that by surrendering so soon I was inflicting on Irmi an injury I had the power to avoid. When I agreed, I understood intellectually what would happen, but I did not truly understand. Chemotherapy is poison. The doctors who administer it are like gardeners. Through a process of trial and error they try to mix a perfect poison, one that will kill the weeds but not the shrubs. But to the poison, a plant is a plant, a cell is a cell. So the gardeners and the doctors tinker. They make fine adjustments to kill some things and not others. It is neither art nor science, just crude, continual recalibration.

I feel a hole where my liver used to be. I feel it growing back. I also feel cancer, like a grain of sand in your eye, coursing through my veins.

My brain feels shrunken. I cannot form thoughts. I cannot listen to Bach. I read a sentence and when I look up I cannot remember it. When I wake up in the morning and push the sheet aside, I do not recognize my own legs. I do not even try to imagine running a mile again one day. I try to imagine walking half a block.

Irmi’s food, which used to give me such pleasure, tastes like metal shavings. An open bottle of champagne on the counter across the room makes me retch. I sit on my stool in the shower and scrub myself raw, yet still I feel filthy, like I am rinsing the wrong side of a window. I brush my teeth until my gums bleed and my saliva tastes like sour milk.

I am nearing the end of the chaos, meaning I am nearing the end. I can feel that. On my fifth day home I could not sit inside any longer. I had to be on the water. All I planned to do was float, but the winds were strong. I thought I could surf. Irmi was inside doing laundry. I climbed on to the board and headed toward the cove, and I fell almost immediately. I couldn’t pull the sail back out of the water, so I just lay down on my belly and paddled back to the dock. I looped a line around a cleat because I was too tired to haul the board out of the water, and when I looked up, Irmi was standing there. Her cheeks were crimson. Her lips quivered. She repeated my name three times and I could not meet her eyes. By the time I got up the ladder, she was inside. There was a towel on the floor next to the door.

When I walked in she did not speak. She was sitting in the living room reading, or pretending to, her back to me. She had poured herself a glass of wine. It was not yet nine in the morning.

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