Shaken To The Core

Faina had checked out of the hospital on September 10, 2009. For almost a year her health was good. We took advantage of the open window catching Baltimore Symphony Orchestra concerts, many memorable restaurant meals, more than a few exceptional films, a Mediterranean cruise, visiting family in Israel, and enjoying a wedding weekend with Faina's Leningrad medical school classmates in Seattle.

In August, an MRI indicated a growth on the liver, the region that defined the original gastric cancer as stage 4. Dr. Schulick thought that it could not be cancer and advised against surgery and a biopsy. He proposed waiting a month, redoing the scan and planning based on that data. We felt that a bullet had been dodged.

After an anxious month, we received a blood test report that was "Off the Charts" for cancer. The Carbohydrate Antigen 19-9 score, which had been 21 on July 22, 2010 was now at 2619. The report read "Results cannot be interpreted as absolute evidence of the presence or absence of malignant disease." The CT scan removed all doubt, among the statements, "peritoneal carcinomatosis should be considered."

We have entered an entirely new phase. We have renewed our communication with Sloan-Kettering. We are developing a relationship with National Cancer Institute-National Institute of Health. Dr. Koutrelakos at Maryland Oncology/Hematology is once again our rabbi. Chemotherapy begins tomorrow.

Between monents of calm I reach out to two cultural icons that have been the background track of my adult life, Allen Ginsberg's poem Howl and Edward Munch's canvas Scream.

     I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness,

     who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out if I had a vision
     or you had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity.