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.So many decisions to make, so many things to do, so little time.We made arrangements with the M.D.Anderson CancerCenter to come down the day after Christmas.We celebratedChristmas Day at home, quietly, with our Oklahoma City family,then spent the afternoon and early evening packing for our tripthe next day and calling a few friends.Kay s sister, Cindy, called to say that she was going to driveus to Houston.I told her that wouldn t be necessary, but she saidit was all settled.Technically Cindy s my sister-in-law, but for aslong as I can remember, I ve thought of her as the sister I neverhad.And I knew her well enough to know that if she said she wasdriving, then she was driving, period.On Christmas Day, our own Dr.Saadah in Oklahoma Cityhad spoken to his friend Dr.Raymond Sawaya, who said he wouldbe glad to see me.This Dr.Sawaya s titles must have required aspecial oversize business card: Professor and Chairman, Depart-ment of Neurosurgery; the Anne C.Brooks and Anthony BullockIII Distinguished Chair in Neurosurgery; and Director, BrainTumor Center.Great! I was going to be taken care of by the Top Gun him-self!We were in good hands.YANKEE for LIFE " 245On the way down to Houston on the 26th, I did the dumbestthing I ve ever done in my life.After stopping in Dallas for a bite to eat, I jumped behind thewheel and drove the rest of the way.Hey, I was hopped up onsteroids, and I was feeling no pain.Kay and Cindy tried to talkme out of it, but I said, No, no, I feel fine.Just get in the car andlet s get going.Of course, I learned later that I could have had a seizure atany moment that seizures are common in people with braintumors and that I could have killed all three of us right thereon I 45.Lucky? No, blessed.The admissions process on the evening of the 26th was a littlebumpy at first, because we had trouble finding the emergencyroom.As walk-ins, we d been told to report to the ER for pre-screening prior to admission.I know: ERs tend to have big neonsigns that say  Emergency Room, but we arrived around 9 P.M.and drove around the place a couple of times the Houston Med-ical Center, where Anderson is located, feels bigger than RhodeIsland before we finally found it.Finally, we got to where we were supposed to be, parked thecar, and went in to get me admitted.There I filled out a bunchof forms and presented myself before the admitting nurse, whoscanned them and began to grill me.HER:  Mr.Murcer, what type of cancer do you have?ME:  Ma am, I have a brain tumor.I don t have cancer. (Thatwas technically honest: I didn t know, not for sure, that mytumor was malignant.)She didn t exactly roll her eyes, but she might as well have.Afterall, you don t go to M.D.Anderson unless you do have cancer.HER:  Do you want DNR?ME:  Beg pardon?246 " BOBBY MURCERHER:  Do Not Resuscitate.Do you want Do Not ResuscitateDNR? You know.Pump, Pump.Pump!  (And she motionedher hands up and down.)  Do you want DNR?ME:  Heck, no.I definitely want to be resuscitated!As far as I knew, I was just checking in to get a biopsy and asecond opinion.What part of an exam requires resuscitation? Itold Kay as we walked back to our seats in the waiting room thatI was pretty sure they weren t going to pull any punches aroundhere.Next I got a preliminary checking out from a couple of doc-tors and nurses there in the ER.I d brought along all my medicalrecords from Oklahoma City, including my MRI pictures.Theydrew some blood, took all my vital signs ( normal but nervous,was how I read them), and asked a few questions.Then one of thedocs, a neurosurgeon, asked if I d like to see my MRI.Sure, whynot.I d never seen one before.She put it up on the screen andthere, on the right side, was what the doc described as  a masswith edema.To me, what it looked like was a satellite picture of a categoryfive hurricane.A few more questions, and we were done.Good thing, becauseall us Oklahoma people were running on empty.Next thing Iknew, Kay was tucking me in at our room at the Marriott MedicalCenter across the street from the hospital.We got to sleep about2 A.M.It had been a long drive, a long day.The first order of business on the morning of December 27 wasto meet Dr.Sawaya at the Brain and Spine Center and get thisshow on the road.But when I showed up as directed at 9 A.M.onDecember 27, I was told that Dr.Sawaya wasn t in the office thatday, and that I had been assigned to a Dr.Jeffrey Weinberg.Who? All the docs I knew personally were a state away, the docI d driven all the way down to Houston to see wasn t around, andYANKEE for LIFE " 247I was being turned over to someone whose name had never evensurfaced in the conversations of the last 48 hours.Who was this Dr.Weinberg anyway?For starters, he was on the young side, late 30s, which I took asa good sign.It meant to me that he was likely to know all the newtricks of the trade.But we explained to him our situation: that wehad come down to see Dr.Sawaya.Dr.Weinberg said he appreciated my frustration, and that hewould certainly understand if I preferred to wait for Dr.Sawaya.But he was very straightforward about the need to move fast.Wecouldn t pussyfoot around; this thing had to come out.Do I wait around for Dr.Sawaya, who wasn t available rightnow, to do the job? Or do I let this Dr.Weinberg cut out my cat-egory five hurricane the next day?Big decision.Biggest decision I d had to make since Mr.Stein-brenner put me on the spot back in 1983 and then even he hadgiven me more time.Kay and I explained to Dr.Weinberg how confused we wereabout making that choice.We told him that a friend, BarbaraCohen, had given us the name of one other brain surgeon she hadheard was the best in the business, but unfortunately he was inNew York City Dr.Patrick Kelly.As soon as we said Dr.Kelly sname, Dr.Weinberg smiled:  He was my mentor for seven yearswhile I was at NYU.And you re right.He d be your man if youwere in New York for this surgery.Well, that was all we needed to hear.We both had tears ofgratitude in our eyes at this wonderful  coincidence. This waswhen we finally saw the pieces of our puzzle coming together.We saw that God seemed to be setting up the board, as in a chessgame.People were moved out of the way, others (Dr.Weinberg!)put in our path.It all became very clear to Kay and to me thatthere was a plan, and that we had a Leader, and we would knowjust what to do.We decided on the spot: Dr.Jeffrey Weinberg was our guy.But still, I d never seen him work, so I asked him one morequestion. Do you have a ball and glove around here, by any chance?248 " BOBBY MURCER Uh, no, I don t.Why do you ask? Oh, I just thought we might go out to the parking lot, have alittle catch.Give me a chance to check out your eye-hand coor-dination.To his credit, he smiled.I m guessing he sensed I was fightinga bunch of butterflies in my stomach and trying to joke them intocalming down.I got the feeling that he understood.I also got thefeeling that he was pretty confident in his eye-hand coordination.Finally I popped the question that Kay and I had been puttingoff since we got the brain tumor news in the restaurant parkinglot just three days earlier it felt more like three years back inOklahoma City: Is it malignant?We both pretty much knew what the answer would be.After all,this was the M.D.Anderson Cancer Center.But I know I wasn tprepared for the certainty in his voice. Yes.Definitely.My gut response, which I kept to myself, was  Can I get asecond opinion?Instead I asked him,  So how bad is it? No way to tell at this point, Dr.Weinberg said [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]