I never saw the hospital's head of surgery, but through Chris & the ER doc, he passed on word that I needed to be transferred to a larger medical center in Albany. He feared that if the adrenal mass started to bleed, they were not equipped to handle it. The ER doc wanted us to go to Albany Medical Center.
This was our first test of control. We had had a bad experience years earlier at Albany Med, when we walked out with our then 3-year-old rather than go through with a hernia operation there. We found it very cold & uncaring. We could not imagine feeling confident about treatment there. So we insisted the ER doc make arrangements at St. Peter's Hospital instead. He was reluctant at first, since he may have known people at Albany Med & the transfer arrangements might have been easier, but we were firm.
We waited in the windowless room in the ER for hours while transfer details were hammered out. I had morphine for the pain & anti-nausea drug for the vomiting, both of which were effective.
I wanted to ride up in the car with Tony but they were insistent I go by ambulance. Chris urged me not to argue, so I let my protests die.
We had been in the ER since 7 a.m. They were finally ready for transport about 3 p.m. The one bright spot was that I didn't have to go through St. Peter's ER also. Greenport Rescue delivered me right to a hospital bed in a semi-private room.
Now the other big plus about St. Peter's for us is that serving with Tony on a bank board of directors is a man who has served on the St. Peter's board for 17 years. Tony called him before we even left Hudson, to get the names of the top oncologist & surgeon at St. Peter's. Normally, neither Tony nor I would be inclined to make a call for any special favor, but there was nothing normal about the day.
Chris, who had spent the day shuttling between us in the ER & working in the hospice unit, followed the ambulance up, while Tony went home to feed Max (our 6 ½ year old Golden Retriever) and pick up some things. He arrived shortly after we did.
Now, in the hindsight of just 11 days later, the next couple of days at St. Peter's are a bit of a blur – nice nurses, lab techs, aides, being poked to draw blood every couple of hours round the clock, an 85-year-old roommate recovering from some lung problem who had a helluva cough & very loud daughters. On the 2nd night the president of St. Peter's stopped in briefly to check on me. I assured him I was very pleased with the care.
On day 2, they repeated the CT scan I'd had in Hudson. I had to drink something like a banana smoothie for the contrast. Somehow, the fact that I normally hate banana seemed so unimportant, altho' the mixture Hudson uses for their contrast scan was much more palatable.
The St. Peter's radiologist had a different interpretation from his CT scan, than I'd had in Hudson. The St. P's doc didn't think it was necessarily bleeding, that it could be some other fluid, and that in any case, it seemed to have stopped. Seems that part of the adrenal gland is in a tight area of the body, so any enlargement would cause pain – luckily. If it had been in a roomy part of the abdominal cavity, there would have been no pain, no reason to seek medical attention. So it all might have progressed much further before detection.
Actually, the Hudson ER doc found a chest x-ray I'd had a year earlier when I'd come in with bronchitis and it showed a tiny spot on the lung. I had never been told. It was missed. But given how much I hate the thought of surgery, perhaps it is better. I am surprised at how little I care that it was missed. It is what it is.
It is now two weeks later. I have now known I have lung cancer for two weeks. Trying to go back and create a coherent narrative of the last two weeks is difficult already, but I'd like a record.
It was the middle of the night on Wed/Thursday morning at St. Peter's when I realized it was crazy to let this stop us from getting to Ham's wedding.The pain was gone. The tests scheduled (needle biopsy, PET scan) could wait another few days.
The doctors were worried about my going, but we found a hospitalist who was new at St. Peter's who was willing to discharge along with pain meds prescription. He was perfect. When I asked what brought him to St. P's (once a journalist, always a journalist), he explained it is his day job, that he came to do research in joy & ethical living with someone in the area. (Tony recognized the name & said the guy has a reputation as a cultist.) But how could someone here to study joy not help us get to our son's wedding.
In what we quickly learned is typical hospital routine, Thursday morning was spent waiting while paperwork was done. The oncologist we had seen the day before and liked so much, Dr Arthur Sunkin, did not come around. We think he didn't want any part of the discharge. (When we saw him in his office 10 days later, he said he was glad we went to the wedding.)
So after a quick stop home to shower & pack & drop the dog at the pet sitter, off we went, pain meds & scans in hand. All the docs wanted us to have the scans in case we needed to seek emergency treatment along the way.
Thursday afternoon in the car was great. Weather was good. I was pain free & we were heading to our son's wedding & what was really a family reunion. I hadn't seen another of our sons, Jayson, in 17 months. He lives in the mountains of Colorado, where he owns a guide service (Crested Butte Mountain Guides).I had rented a big house in Oxford, MS, so we could all stay together.
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