8/2/99

The king and I

(Written on the death of King Hussein, from Non-Hodgkinג€™s lymphoma)

Dear King,

    I want you to know, I'm sorry for you. With all my heart.
    Your integrity, your dignity, were unmatched among national leaders in this part of the world, perhaps this part of the universe.
    All good people in my country are experiencing the same deep sadness right now as your people are. We too lost who we call "hamelech," The King.
    But that's not it. My feelings ... it's a personal thing between you and me, Your Majesty.
    What you had, I had.
    Reading the daily reports about your fight against Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, I could have exchanged my name for yours; it was like reading my own recent memories. Step by step, the grueling treatments, the tortuous side effects, the merciful triumphs, the devastating setbacks. I ached with you at every stage.
    When they said you were dying, that you were going home with no hope left, I shuddered so that my bones rattled. Until then, we were like blood brothers. We had the same initial course of chemo, we won remission, and the cancer came back; we were then pummeled with far more potent poisons, ending with the most radical concoction designed to kill our living cells; and then the bone-marrow transplant, the implantation of clean, healthy cells, followed by the harrowing effects, the weeks in an isolation ward, breathlessly awaiting the tiniest shred of good news.
    Then you went home to great cheering, as I did, and slowly built up a sense of confidence that the treatments might work, as I did.
    But what happened then, Your Majesty?
    Your cancer came back a third time, as mine did not. We were going to make it, sir, I was so certain.
     Of course, like you, I've wondered during this second remission: what if...?
    I asked my doctor, my wonderful Dr. Paltiel, what if. She was honest with me: she shrugged her shoulders.
    You got the same sort of answer when you asked, what now?
    And that kind of worries me. You're a Highness, I'm just a working stiff; if the big If happens, and they can't do a thing for a king but
send him home to die, there's not much hope for us little people in the same condition.
    The difference between "what now" and "what if" is great: it is the difference between you, dead, and me, vibrant. 

I'M SURE you were in good hands at the Mayo Clinic: a man who controls a nation's gold reserves doesn't skimp at a time like that.
    I'm a little late in suggesting this, but maybe you didn't have to go to the other end of the world. I went next door, to Hadassah-Ein Karem, which is like crosstown for you.
    Let me tell you about the place.
    Looming above the picturesque village of Ein Karem, I found the perfect spot for my infusion of vitality.
    I would've prefered a cozy room in some quaint inn in the valley village, rather than up on the mountaintop. Upper Ein Karem is nice, but it just doesn't have the ambience. It's so ... sterile. Like a hospital.
    I booked a room for a month up at Chateau Hadassah. Every morning I awoke, gazed wistfully upon the view and went back to bed. From there in Isolation Room No. 10, in the Bone Marrow Transplantation Department, the valley, the view, even Isolation Room No. 9 next door, might as well have been Pitcairn Island: they were unreachable.
    I had had this cancer, beat it, walked away from it scoffing, and just about the time I started taking good health for granted again, it snuck up from behind and whacked me a good one in the nodes, and there I was, back in hospital.
    I really did take things for granted. Whenever Dr. Paltiel probed for swellings, I held my breath, not because I was afraid she would find something, but because she had cold hands.
    (I suppose the doctor attending a king warms his hands first.)
    Anyway, the cancer came back. The doctors asked: Remember the first time you had chemotherapy? Oh yeah, I said. Well, forget it, they said, that was nothing.
    Now they started calling it radical chemotherapy.
    It's radical because the regimen included eating at least 15 hospital meals. (That, and not the chemo, is what caused the nausea.) The chemo cocktail they gave to returning guests was a five- or six-day stint -- the same, I presume at the Mayo. Then they sent me home and waved and said "Come back soon!" and I did.
    Radical chemo has the recoil of a howitzer: you go home feeling pretty good, considering, and about a woozy week later, wham, you come staggering back to The Ward, where they work diligently to get you better again so you can eventually face another round of the same.
    But that was all behind me when I checked in for the transplant.
    A free all-expenses-paid stay at the Chateau-sur-le-Village -- for a whole month!
    Some vacation.
    "How you feeling?" they asked.
    "Great!" I said.
    "Great!" they said. "Then you're ready for the big one."
    Turns out all that radical chemo was nothing.
    As best as I could understand it, the Big One involved a disconcerting process whereby they sucked the life out of me and then introduced those new cells.
    Does all this sound familiar?
    And then, that desperately depressing month in isolation. Yeah, I know, I know: "don't remind me."
    Like me, you probably felt you were at the best hospital in the world for a bone marrow transplant. Were your nurses as wonderful as mine?
    What we've been through, you and me, nobody should know.
    But ... what now?
    I will continue my biweekly visits to the Bone Marrow Day Care Dept., grumbling about the overcrowding and understaffing.
    I will continue taking my pills. I will still be jolted by Dr. Paltiel's cold hands.
    I will stay alive, long enough to keep my promise to my daughters that though others die, I will not.
    And I mourn you, silently grateful it is not you mourning me.
    Sometimes, it is better to be a mere mortal than a king.

    May you rest in peace.

    Sam.