First to Die

Chapter65

A COUPLE OF HOURS LATER, I sat in my hospital smock in the hematology clinic at Moffett. "Dr. Medved would like a word with you before we start," said Sara, my transfusion nurse. I felt nervous as she unpacked an IV setup for my treatment. Truth was, I had been feeling okay. Not much pain or nausea other than the incident in the ladies' room last week. Dr. Medved walked in with a manila folder under his arm. His face was friendly but un confiding I smiled weakly. "Only good news?" He sat across from me on the ledge of a counter. "How are you feeling, Lindsay?" "I wasn't feeling so bad when I saw you before." "Fatigued?" "Only a little. End-of-day kind of thing." "Sudden nausea? Queasiness?" I admitted I had vomited suddenly once or twice. He made a quick notation on a chart. He paged through some medical charts in the folder. "I see we've undergone four packed-red cell transfusions so far…" My heart was racing the longer he took. Finally, he put down the folder and he looked squarely at my face. "I'm afraid your erythrocyte count has continued to decline, Lindsay. You can see the trend line here." Medved passed me a sheet. Leaning forward, he took a Cross pen out of his breast pocket. The paper had a computer graph on it. He traced the pattern with his pen. The line went steadily down. Shit. I felt the air rush out of my lungs with disappointment. "I'm getting worse," I said. "To be frank," the doctor acknowledged, "it's not the trend we were hoping for." I had ignored the possibility that this might happen, burying myself in the case, sure that the numbers would improve. I had built this view on a natural trust that I was too young and energetic to be truly sick. I had work to do, important work, a life to live. I was dying, wasn't I? Oh, God. "What happens now?" I managed to say. My voice came out as a whisper. "I want to continue with the treatments," Medved replied. "In fact, increase them. Sometimes these things take a while to kick in." "Super hi-test," I joked glumly. He nodded. "From this point on, I'd like you to come in three times a week. And I'm going to increase the dosage by thirty percent." He shifted his weight off the counter. "In and of itself, there's no immediate cause for alarm," he declared in a marginally uplifting tone. "You can continue to work- that is, if you feel up to it." "I have to work," I told Medved.