After all the solemnity of that day in 1992 after my surgery, no problems arose until 1998 when the pain started. It was a day in July as we were returning with my mother from a trip to Nebraska. We’d taken her for a small family reunion that consisted mostly of cousins she rarely saw.
We were driving along on the return trip and I felt a definite twinge of pain in my side. As my usual reaction to that sort of minor thing is to ignore it, I ignored it. But it wouldn’t be ignored. As the days went by the pain worsened until I visited my doctor who upon reviewing my medical history referred me to an oncologist, Dr. William Eng Lee.
Dr. Lee is of Chinese descent. I liked him immediately. He’s kind and caring and listens to his patients. The only problem, at least from my point of view, rested in the fact he felt chemotherapy the only answer. I didn’t. The last thing I wanted was poison dumped into my body.
Because I refused chemo and was in pain he gave me morphine. The entire month of August I took morphine. Any time I needed more I just called the doctor’s office. The nurse would say, “I’ll call in and renew your prescription. You don’t need to be in pain.”
What I remember of that August is very little except sleeping. At night I slept in bed. In the daytime I made a nest on the living room sofa and slept there. My husband set up a small table next to the sofa to hold necessities, mostly water and pills, but everyday he clipped off a red bloom from the neighbor’s huge rose bush that hung over the fence into our patio. He’d once bought me a set of three miniature green glass vases and he’d place the single red rose in one of those. Every time I opened my eyes I saw the beautiful rose. It remains to me today an expression of his love.
I got a call from the doctor one day asking me to come in. At the appointed time a friend drove me over since I couldn’t drive because of the morphine. The doctor said he’d talked to other doctors about my case and he’d found a doctor who suggested aspiration as an alternative to chemo.
It seems the cancer when it attached to my liver consisted of a series of fluid-filled cysts so removing the fluid would lessen the pain. Eager to give anything a try I set an appointment for the first of September. Next, I needed to get off the morphine. Dr. Lee assured me any withdrawal symptoms would be minimal.
Unfortunately for me, he was wrong.
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