A universe all her own
Cancer patient is content to focus on the here and now
The instant that Emily Thornburg stands up, Derek, her black cat, jumps into the window-shaped rectangle of sunlight she has vacated on her couch.
Emily adopted Derek from the Wisconsin Humane Society about a year ago. That was around the time her doctors determined that the pain escalating in her left knee was not the wear and tear of a former long-distance runner, but rather a growing and aggressive cancer — osteosarcoma.
Emily worked at the humane society back then. The thing that attracted her to Derek was his size. He was miniscule. She’d never seen such a tiny kitten. She was also attracted to his constant meowing. So much meowing from this tiny, tiny animal.
When she opened his little cage, he leapt into her lap
“I’m definitely beating two years.” EMILY THORNBURG, CANCER PATIENT
and, well, that was that. She put Derek in her jeep with the Bernie Sanders sticker on the back and brought him home.
Derek stretches out in the sunlight while Emily pulls on her coat and wraps a scarf around her neck. She’s already wearing a knit cap. Under the gray cap, a red Mohawk. Her hair fell out during the chemotherapy, and having decided to put a premium on being brave, Emily went with the Mohawk as it grew back in. The chemo was awful. It sickened her stomach, ulcerated her throat, and did almost nothing to reduce the tumor.
Surgeons at Aurora St. Luke’s Medical Center removed it, along with most of her knee, part of her thigh and a little of her calf. They replaced the bone parts with a prosthetic, which you may or may not notice, but for the 2-foot scar down the front of her leg.
The cancer has since spread to her lungs and is untreatable in any conventional way.
She recently had some scans done on her lungs, and she leaves Derek to doze on the couch while she drives to St. Luke’s to meet with her oncologist.
Emily, who is 30, wants to review the scans with him and get a clearer idea of how long she can expect to live.
*** It’s a strange world. For example. Over the summer, some guy stole Emily’s Jeep. The police got it back. The thief left behind his credit cards, Social Security card and identification. But someone, the thief apparently, had removed the Bernie Sanders sticker.
Emily majored in sociology in college and would like to understand people more. She was working on another degree in human resources when she got sick.
One of the losses she has felt this year is the loss of a career. She’s not going to live long enough to have a career.
Or buy a home. As a girl, she had owned a chestnut-colored gelding named Gabriel, and she had hoped to someday buy a small farm where she would take care of horses rescued from abusive or neglectful owners.
Emily tries to remain in the here and now. On the mirror in her living room, she’s written “Be Present.” But it’s hard not to mourn.
Meaningfulness is another tough one. How, she wonders, is she supposed to find meaning in her life with death staring her in the face?
Emily’s oncologist is Manish Pant. Emily thinks he’s very handsome. His office is on the ninth floor of St. Luke’s Physician’s Office Building. The waiting room has a spectacular view of downtown Milwaukee. The blue sky seems endless.
A confederacy of family and friends who simply adore Emily has come together to support her through her illness.
One of them is Jaime Nunn, one of Emily’s oldest friends, who sits in on Emily’s appointments, taking notes and asking questions.
Pant meets with them in an examining room. He is wearing a blue suit and is indeed young and handsome.
On his computer screen, they examine images of each of the seven nodules that have grown on her lungs. Pant speaks softly and reassuringly. The bad news, there’s a new growth. The good news, the other nodules haven’t grown very much. What Emily wants to know is very specific: Does he agree with other doctors who have told her she may have as long as two years to live?
And, she wants to know, can she delay, maybe for a couple of months, participating in a medical trial. She’d really like to travel — go to New Zealand! — while she’s still feeling OK.
You’re young, healthy and have a robust immune system, Pant tells her. Two years is a statistic. You are you. Put the trial off until spring. See the world.
“I’m definitely beating two years,” Emily says.
*** It’s nearly dark before Emily gets home.
She unlocks the green door that leads to the stairway to her apartment. Twenty steps. First the right foot. Then lift the left. Twenty times.
Lately Emily’s been thinking about how very big everything is. Time and space. All that is. It’s unfathomable. And then there’s herself, making her way up the stairs one step at a time. She says she doubts the universe fathoms her.
She says she’s decided that the universe is just too big to think about. Forever makes no sense.
She says what she is sure of is that she is here, now, in her body. There’s only 134 pounds of her, prosthetics included. But all of the universe that matters to her, she is the center of it.
Ascending the steps, she hears Derek meowing. She opens the door to her apartment, and there he is, happy as a dog.
She pours herself a glass of wine and feeds Derek. The little engine of life inside him purrs, and she can feel her own heart beat.