Vera Gelvin

STAYING ALIVE

Recuperating at my daughter's home,
that dreaded word – cancer.
Inroads into my right lung,
a horizontal slash below my armpit.

On the TV screen,
John Travolta dances in Saturday Night Fever.
Disco was dying,
but the movie revives it for two more years.

In the disco palace,
the strobe light spins:
it's December 1977;
I've just turned 40.

The Bee Gees sing
    ev'rybody shakin'. . . and we're stayin'alive
as John moves his lithe body,
arms raised, hips punctuating the disco beat.

I love John as Tony Manero.
John, whose lover in real life
has just died from breast cancer,
goes on with making the movie.

Now, for the millennium,
rejected film scraps have been rescued,
carefully spliced, and the new, improved movie
re-released.

There we are on the screen, John and I
together in Disco Time for eternity,
dancing to the Bee Gees falsetto sound,
both of us stayin' alive,
yes, stayin' alive.

* * *

MAKING PEACE WITH DEATH

1. The Cough

When did Death move in unasked?
Maybe it started in the months after September 11th,
gazing out Eagle Rock Reservation over the Hudson River
at the negative space in New York City.
In the wake of nine eleven, the country
is awash in Fear, as am I.

For years I have a chronic cough. Treated with allergy shots
and surgery for a deviated septum, the cough persists.
It's winter 2001. I've just turned sixty-four.
The year before, the doctor sees something in a chest x-ray.
He decides that it is probably an irregularity on the film,
not an actual "finding." A year later, he takes another x-ray.
It shows the same thing.

On further tests, the image of a small mass on my right lung
"lights up," a marker for cancer. The pulmonary doctor recommends
removal of my right lung. I am numb. All I can think of is
how will I work?

He orders a scan of my brain. My brain?
Tells me I have adenocarcinoma, a medical term for lung cancer.
Tells me the survival rate for this cancer is five years
or less.

My daughter suggests a second opinion,
but I feel that I have no time to run from doctor to doctor.
I might as well go along with this one.
The surgeon tells me four to six weeks for recovery.

He doesn't remove my lung. Once he has sliced me open
he finds many tiny nodules in the membrane lining my chest cavity,
and decides there in no sense in removing my lung
since he can't remove the lining.
He takes samples for biopsy and sews me up.

My daughter, Susan, waits in the waiting room,
expecting an operation of a few hours. Hours pass;
no one comes to tell her what's happening.
No one answers her questions. I'm in surgery for five hours.
She thinks I have died.

Finally the surgeon comes out, walks past her without saying a word.
My daughter is now convinced I'm dead. After a while
a nurse comes over to tell her I am in the recovery room.

The biopsy shows malignancy.

2.

No I don't smoke.

3. Second Opinion

My cough has finally stopped.
Something like killing an ant with a sledge hammer.
Still, I'm glad it's gone.

I visit the oncologist connected with the hospital.
A sign in the waiting room offers free coffee.
Half-filled paper cups surround the coffee machine.
The machine is not working. A bad sign.

The oncologist is supposed to recommend options.
Instead she quickly steers the conversation:
You probably want to treat the cancer quickly and aggressively.

Since I am neither quick nor aggressive
I don't sign up for chemotherapy,
but decide to think it over. I don't favor aggression,
even if the "enemy" is cancer.

This time I listen to suggestions about a second opinion.
I call Sloan Kettering and ask to see a cancer specialist.
I'm told that it's months for an appointment, but they'll put me
on a waiting list for cancellations. The next day I get a call.
Can I come in tomorrow with my biopsy slides
and surgical reports?

I'm able to round up enough of what I need
and trek into New York City. Did I drive?
Did I take a bus?

This is what the doctor tells me:
Your cancer is the type that is slow growing.
Chemotherapy is not effective on slow-growing cancers.
Radiation works best on a concentrated tumor.
Your tumors are small and spread over your
right lung and lining.

He recommends: no chemo, no radiation.
Wait and see when and if symptoms develop.
New drugs will be coming along for lung cancer.
Don't sign on to any trials for experimental drugs.

I do what he tells me –
namely, I opt for no treatment.
Just follow-up testing.

4. Oncology Center

The Sloan doctor won't take me as a patient.
Something about doctor courtesy, since I'm already
someone else's patient.
Even though I'm not.

The first few years
I try not to think about dying
but the air is thick with thoughts of death.

I am now identified as a cancer patient –
one of the club.

Vera Gelvin of Knoxville, TN is a poet, photographer, and playwright. Her poems set to music by Anita Sandler are available in the CD "Kotodama: Spirit of Words." Her latest chapbook is The Presence of Everything (Cronin Communications, 2012).