Radio[Active] Silence

 I sat in the basement of Albany Med last Wednesday. Laptop open, headphones in, work cell phone, personal cellphone, notebooks, hospital paperwork. All strewn across a hospital bedside table, the ones meant to look like dark wood on a metal base with little black wheels. 

I helped Matt tie up his hospital gown, paced around asking staff why they were two hours behind on bringing him into the operating room. I stayed through the procedure, working, and holding my breath. 

Matt was anxious, Matt’s still anxious. We are onto the next treatment option. Something we hope relieves some of the tumor burden on his liver. 

We waited after the procedure last week, a day went by until we got the call that Matt can have the radiation procedure known as Y90. The “Y” stands for Yttrium. It’s a treatment where they access your femoral artery and inject radioactive beads through the arteries that feed the tumors. Matts portal vein is completely blocked, which has basically added to the lack of treatment available to him. So they have had to delay to order smaller beads to inject into the femoral artery to feed the larger tumors now engulfing his liver. 

Matt will have to stay in the basement, alone. No physical contact is allowed for almost a week while he heals and the radiation dissipates. No holding the girls, no hugs, no comforting embraces. I’ll make sure to bring him his meals and he can come upstairs when no one is home. But, it will be lonely. However, it’s our only hope. 

We haven’t said much about it, because whenever Matt starts a new treatment we let everyone know and it’s usually followed by dark news and dreary days. I’m hopeful this could buy us a few months, and hopefully help reduce the strain on Matt’s liver. But, I’m careful with how much hope I muster, because it’s hard to muster and I don’t want to waste what little I have left.

I hear Matt reading to Couraira, as I pick up the house. I hear his voice quiver as he gets to a line in the story that reminds him how precious the time is. 

A man that is willing to be radioactive and give up even a week of what little time he may have left with his girls, is a man who is still in the fight. 

And that’s a man worth standing behind.

I queue up the song “Radioactive” by Imagine Dragons in my head. “Whoa, oh, oh, oh, oh, whoa, oh, oh, oh, I'm radioactive, radioactive”. 

So tomorrow I’ll be in Albany Med, with a makeshift office outside the doors where Matt faces his procedure. Same song in my head, same hopes in my heart.