I know one other guy with brain cancer. Martino Sclavi.
Martino lives in Rome. When news of my diagnosis reached a mutual friend, he offered to share his war stories. We emailed a few times. He was in New York earlier this month, so I used some miles to fly down. We met at my in-laws’ place, then took a walk and got some brunch.
I remember his first email, May 14:
What can I say to someone that is just beginning what I began only 3 months ago? I am doing well. The whole thing ain’t as tragic as one would expect.
I, too, was feeling upbeat. The shock and trauma of the previous weeks was washed away by a rush of steroids. I began to look back, to seize and savor the memories of survival.
I replied May 17:
Please allow me to share with you some of the details of my diagnosis and treatment, and to tell you a little bit about who I am.
I called it “the first chapter of my story”. A week later, it became the basis of this blog.
Martino more than matched it May 18:
I was fortunate to have forgotten or “erased” most of my “Chapter 1”. All I know is that I was in L.A. working on a film script and I began having some pretty terrible head-aches which would not go away with the usual over-the-counter. After the presentation of my work I asked a friend to bring me to a doctor… By the time we came to the emergency room of the hospital (from the reports of others) I was very confused.
Considering it was L.A., the emergency room staff assumed that I was some kind of drug case and just put me on a bed to sleep it off. My friend went home assuming the same. Fortunately, a nurse realized that there was something else going on and picked up my phone, calling the last number dialed. All of this and what happened in the next 2 days I have heard from others because I have absolutely no recollection of it. I have been told that my friends arrived to the hospital where I was still in a confused state and made sure that I was taken care of. The surgeon was a good guy and the fact that my friend (who answered the nurse’s call on that fatal ([10. I believe he means “fateful”, though I’m reminded of wondering, somewhat playfully, whether I might have actually died in surgery and am now experiencing a sort of dream. Somewhere else in the multiverse?]) night) is a very well known actor allowed some of the financial worry of the hospital to go by in the emergency.
I woke up and found my wife and mother and sister in the hospital. They had been flown in from Italy. I had little or no clue what had happened and still now it all feels a bit like a dream.([20. I have edited Martino’s words (lightly, I think), mostly for punctuation and spelling.])
I wrote June 9:
I just wanted to say “hi” and see how you’re feeling. I started chemotherapy and radiation therapy yesterday. I was pretty nervous about having my head strapped down to the table. They made a special mask for me that connects to the table and holds my head still. It looks pretty creepy. Can I send you a picture of it? You might be interested.
I didn’t know then, as I do now, that Martino’s an easy-going kind of guy. He responded…
Do you mean this kind of “silence of the lambs” kind of mask 😉
… with this image:
In August he wrote with news of a second brain surgery, this time in Rome. (Some of his original tumor remained after the first surgery, “done in emergency circumstances”). His doctors cut it out while he was awake. Apparently it was a showcase event, attended by many eager young doctors and an attractive “psycho-neurologist” who had him counting to 20 in various languages. It was a stunning success, but left him unable to read (though he can still write).
So, anyway, brunch. It was so crowded in the restaurant they had to pull our table out of the row to seat me against the wall, then push it back. Martino ignored the menu and requested standard breakfast fare. He had demonstrated his deficiency by reading the advertising in a shop window, on our way there. He can read, but his scope is limited to one letter at a time. It’s slow, tiring, and by the time he reaches the end of a word he might forget how it started. But his speech is articulate.
After brunch we strolled in the park. When our conversation turned to prognoses we discovered a startling contrast. None of Martino’s doctors had cited a prognosis in concrete time. He claimed their sole interest in conversation was his current health and treatment. I told him about hearing my neurosurgeon’s prognosis of 15 months only a few days after my surgery. He vigorously disapproved of that approach. He seemed to expect modern medicine to answer every challenge.
I came away from our conference wondering about how best to face the future. Martino fared worse than me in surgery but seems more relaxed and hopeful. I want to know the numbers, grim as they are. But I also feel my future compressed by doubt, one bad MRI from despairing. Shouldn’t I hedge my bets and stem those grand schemes that now belong to younger men? What good grows in this tall shadow of recurrence?
NOTES: