floaters

Floaters, my eye doctor says.  Nothing to be concerned about, quite common, often triggered by stress and depleted qi.  Most of the time, they won't cause any problems and should vanish in about three months.

Take care of yourself, he says as I leave; I try, I say.  We have known each other for many years, and we both wanly smile, understanding that his advice can't be heeded and my response is of the head, not heart.

Yesterday Rich and I were visited by the resident Hospice physician.  Rich knows him a long time; Rich's father was his patient.

"How are you?" Rich asks him, offering his left hand in greeting.  This is now Rich's only moving limb.

"The question is:  How are you?" the doctor responds, smiling.

"Some days I feel like going on, some days like giving up," Rich says.

The doctor listens.  He doesn't say how narrow is the path between the two roads.

Afterward, the doctor talks to me.  This is a different kind of cancer, he says; he hasn't seen this before.  Unlike most cancers which, in the end, hungrily consume all of the body's nourishment, a chordoma is "benign."  It doesn't travel, it wants only to feed itself.  

"It's location," I say. 

He asks me about the prognosis.  I explain what I've seen, and learned.  Once the chordoma crawls toward the spinal region that is controlling the lungs...

Rich's breathing is becoming more difficult.  

"Maybe a week," the doctor says.  "Once it gets to the lungs."

The nurse on duty reassures me after the doctor leaves.

"It will be longer," she says.  "More than a week, I'm pretty sure."

This is no surprise, I say.  I've known for years this would be the end.

I watch the pair of floaters dancing before my left eye, in the beginning trying to sweep them aside, or turning my head this way, that way, perhaps shaking them loose, forgetting they don't exist out there.  

I watch Rich floating away, and what's out there isn't him, I tell myself, he's in here, and he will not vanish.

Candace