Treadmill

   

So the chemo and the radiation had been going on for a couple of months by now and then the doctors decided that Justin still wasn’t having quite enough fun.

 

They wanted surgery.

 

They wanted to schedule the removal of some of his lymph nodes.

 

It seems that the nodes are one of the first places cancer cells migrate to and so you just get rid of them—or as many as is feasible, anyway. They’re like in your neck, your armpits, your groin—places like that. Oh, they’re probably other places, too, but those would be good for a start.

 

They started by going in and removing the nodes in his left armpit since the main tumor was on his left arm. He was still in recovery, still asleep when the doctor—Ortiz—came in and told me that the initial biopsy was positive. The cancer had spread to his nodes.

 

That meant that he was at least stage two out of four stages and—shit, there’s no way to make it sound like it’s good.

 

OK, crash course: Stage one, the cancer is contained in one location, like a lung or a breast or an arm. Stage two; it’s spread to surrounding, nearby lymph nodes. Stage three; it’s in lymph nodes far away from the original site. So, say in Justin if the original cancer was in his arm, the nodes in his groin or some place would be infected. Stage four, fuck me, that’s when the cancer has advanced beyond the nodes and spread to other organs. Then you’re pretty much fucked, as far as I can tell. OK, sure there are always miracles but basically you’re pretty much screwed.

 

He was stage two and they were running tests to see if he was stage three. He told me that they’d know the results in a few days.

 

Shit.

 

He also told me again—in case I didn’t get it—that this was an aggressive form of cancer and was known to do this.

 

Gee, thanks, doc. I wouldn’t have thought of that, what with having no medical degree. It wouldn’t have occurred to me that maybe, just maybe Justin was fighting against a stacked deck and even if the treatment was a success, the patient still might die.

 

He was down to like one hundred and fifteen pounds. Now, shit, I know he’s not that big, but he was still like one-fifty when this started. His hair is gone, even his eyebrows and his pubes and his eyelashes.

 

He has sores in his mouth that are so bad he can hardly eat and when he does he throws up.

 

Want to know what he had for Thanksgiving? We’d gone back to Pittsburgh for the weekend and his mother had this big traditional dinner with all of his favorites cooked the way he liked them.

 

He spent most of the day lying on the couch, sleeping most of the time and covered by this down comforter that he likes because it’s light but really warm. He’s taken to wearing an old pair of sweats with a thermal shirt—in fact he has them in a rainbow or colors—along with a knit hat partly to hide his head and partly to stay warm.

 

I haven’t even teased him about his stunning ensams, but he knows that they make me cringe. I mean, fuck me. I know he has cancer, but if he has to wear sweats, at least let them be Polo. OK, finally he agreed to cab over to Madison Avenue, to the Ralph Lauren store there and let me buy him a few pairs pissing and moaning the whole time.

 

But I digress.

 

Thanksgiving dinner? He ate a deviled egg. One. That was it. The he fell asleep again.

 

Molly found me after everyone had left upstairs in his old room. Partly I was looking around to see if there was anything that he might like to take with him, partly I didn’t want to wake him up just yet and partly I needed to get away from everything and be by myself for a bit.

 

She came in and told me that she thought that I looked like I was tired—I was thinner than usual and I had these circles under my eyes and she said that I just looked like I was getting beaten down and, fuck me, I just sat on the bed with her beside me and told her the truth that I’d been keeping to myself since the whole Goddamned thing started.

 

I was beat and I was tired and it sucked and I knew that Justin was going through worse shit than I could really imagine, but I wasn’t sure—I didn’t honestly know—how much more I could take and that made me feel like a real asshole because he was the one puking and in pain and looking at forever being a lot shorter than he had a right to hope for.

 

She was really good with that. Especially when you consider that we were talking about her brother. I think she didn’t know what to say—who would?—and so she just held my hand and said something about how he  was counting on me, leaning on me and that when it all started he had told Jen that he thought that it would be better if she stayed in Pittsburgh with Molly. Jenn had freaked, of course, then they argued about whether or not I should be the one who would stay with him in New York.

 

Justin was against it, really against it because he said that he couldn’t do that to me but since it was the only way Jenn would stay with Molly, he had finally agreed. She told me that later that night she had called him at the loft and told him that he was being an asshole, that I wanted to be with him, that she had heard me and Jenn talking in the kitchen when I’d gone to break the diagnosis to her. That call was what made him agree to have me with him. He’d wanted me all along; he just couldn’t ask me to go through it.

 

She told me that he’d said that he didn’t think he’d be able to stand it if I wasn’t there.

 

Fuck me.

 

I knew he’d been arguing about my needing to stay at work and all of that crap, but he was just giving me an out in case I wanted it.

 

Damn.

 

Then she said that Justin had told her last night that he knew I was suffering and it was hard for him to watch.

 

He can’t even take a crap without agony because of something they don’t advertise—a little thing called anal fissures and if you think that sounds like fun you’re a butt load sicker than Justin is…and he’s worried about me.

 

Shit, this is getting maudlin.

 

You want to know what almost made me burst out laughing? Alright, fine, I know it wasn’t funny, but the doctor, Mr. Hotshit Cancer Specialist told me that it was a good thing that Justin had banked a bunch of his sperm before all the treatments started because the radiation can make you sterile.

 

Well—yeah. I’m sure that’s foremost in his mind right about now.

 

You know, we did get one bit of actual good news.

 

When the students at PIFA had found out about Justin being sick so they held—were holding—a series of blood and platelet drives for him. It’s better, less of an adjustment for an already stressed body to get donations from the same group of people if it’s at all possible. They’d been doing this since the chemo and shit started and we were just finding out.

 

When your friends bleed for you, literally, that’s pretty damn good.

 

But then he has that effect on people.

 

Well, so we’re in New York City, the greatest city in the world. (Don’t give me shit on this point because you’ll make no ground with me. Just accept it as a fact.) We’re in New York and we have some time to ourselves everyday.

 

OK, a lot of that time we have is spend with him throwing up and sleeping and just generally feeling like crap, but there are the relative good days when Justin can almost function.

 

Oh, did I tell you I found this wheelchair for him? He’d gotten some sores on his feet from the radiation or something and he can only wear slippers and he gets too tired to walk, so I found this iridescent purple wheelchair that folds up and everything. As such things go, it’s pretty good.

 

Anyway, so we had New York to explore and when he had the energy to deal, we did.

 

The first thing he wanted to see, no shit, were some of the museums.

 

We saw this exhibit of motorcycles at the Guggenheim that was pretty cool—they had like a hundred of the fuckers lined up on that big spiral ramp and they was frigging amazing—colors and paint jobs and chrome like a dyke would cream for.

 

We caught this big show of photographs by Richard Avedon at the Met that blew me away. Everything was black and white and every Goddamned portrait was pretty much straight on against a white background and they were fucking amazing. He somehow crawled inside and showed you just who those fuckers really were.

 

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. While we were at the Met that time we went down to the cafeteria to get some lunch. It’s a cafeteria, a line with trays then you go over to a table—sort of a classier version of high school. So we were starting to eat and I’d forgotten some silverware. Justin got up to get a drink of water. When we both got back to the table like thirty seconds later there was a note written on a napkin sitting at Justin’s place. It was short and said that the person who’d written it was a cancer survivor and that her thoughts would be with Justin.

 

You know, that’s the sort of fucking sentiment that I’d normally use to blow my nose in, but for some reason it got to me and I told Justin that I had to take a leak so I could walk away for a minute.

 

That was a pretty good day. After lunch we found our way to the American wing and they have this fucking huge room that’s glass on one entire wall, looking out to Central Park. The room, a sculpture garden, has to be a hundred by fifty and has stuff by Henry Moore and Rodin and Degas sitting around in plantings with these brick paths and wood benches. One entire side is the façade of a two story house. There are Tiffany windows mounted here and there, it’s quiet and I fell in love with the place.

 

I sat back on one of the benches with Justin in his chair beside me. We were holding hands and his eyes were closed. He looked content, surrounded by the art and the blue skies outside. His color was pretty good that day and we’d had a good time.

 

We just sat there, not saying much, for about an hour then he got tired and we headed back.

 

When we got to our room there was a message, call Dr, Ortiz.

 

I did.

 

The results were in.

 

He was stage three.

 

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