The first time I ever fainted, I was having a mammogram. The test was routine—I’d reached that stage of life where an annual scan was indicated—but I’d never had one before. Though I vaguely knew what was about to happen, the reality exceeded my worst expectations. The radiology office was crowded and impersonal, and I waited for over an hour before finally being shown into a big, messy scanning room where an indifferent technician prodded and paddled me like a piece of meat. I narrowly survived the flattening of my right breast, but when it came to the left, the metal plates squeezed me uncomfortably, and—although I knew it was physically impossible—I felt as if my heart was about to be crushed. The last thing I remember is the plates starting to slide apart, and then I was staring up at a Styrofoam-tiled ceiling, with an alarmed woman hovering over me shouting, “Oh my gawd! Oh my gawd!”
Once I’d recovered, the whole episode seemed amusing: I dined out on the anecdote, gleefully imitating the technician’s nasal cry and my understated British reaction to it (I’d refused juice and walked myself home). Want to know how to prepare for a mammogram? I asked younger friends. Nothing to it. Just lie on a garage floor with your breast wedged under a car tire, then ask a friend to back up the car. Ba da boom!
Then I got cancer and became a frequent fainter. Suddenly it wasn’t so funny any more.
The day I had my liver biopsy, I was still fully immersed in magical thinking about my cancer. It had been two days since a doctor I didn’t know had called to tell me that my liver was riddled with tumors, and less than a day since a second CT scan had caught a primary tumor on my lung. I suppose I was in shock, and denial: this wasn’t happening, because I felt fine and because cancer happened to other people, right? The biopsy would surely reveal that things weren’t as bad as they seemed, or that I’d been sent someone else’s results by mistake.
It was a Friday, lunchtime—and because I’d been squeezed in to radiology at short notice, no one could tell me exactly when my biopsy would happen. Sitting in the waiting room, hubby D and I were nonchalant. We’d brought our laptops to the hospital, and as a television blasted inane banter over our heads, we waited, immersing ourselves in work. No one had told us what to expect from the procedure, and I imagined it would be like the endometrial biopsy I’d had years previously, which had been performed in a couple of minutes by my OB-GYN.
But slowly, as we watched patients shuffle to and fro in gowns, it became clear that this was more serious. Eventually, in a windowless room with a row of beds separated by curtains, I was prepped by a brisk nurse who fitted me with an IV port. A man came in and introduced himself as Brian, the interventional radiologist who would perform the procedure. Brian was short and compact, with a soft voice and blue eyes that looked as if they’d witnessed some stuff. Hearing our British accents, he volunteered that he’d visited London when he was in the military. When it emerged that I’d gotten my diagnosis the previous day, he looked stricken and said, quietly, “Oh, so this is very new.” We nodded, and his face took on an even more soulful look.
In adult humans, the liver weighs about three pounds. As vital organs go, it’s a heavy lifter: among other things, it’s responsible for filtering blood from the digestive tract, detoxifying chemicals, metabolizing drugs and making proteins. The Greek word for liver (hepar) is derived from a verb meaning to mend, or repair. When early 20th century philosopher William James quipped that life “depends on the liver,” he wasn’t exaggerating.
Now, thanks to the nasty bundle of cells in my lung, my liver was under attack, its vital functions compromised. “The lung and liver like to talk to each other,” a reiki therapist would tell me months later, and I would wish that, in this case, they could have shut up.
After another long wait, I was escorted down the hallway to a room with a giant CT scanner, and helped to lie down on the scanning bed. My third CT scan in as many days: the procedure was coming to seem almost normal. Brian had explained that I’d be put under conscious sedation: “You may go to sleep or not, but either way you’ll be relaxed.” A nurse offered a warm blanket and chatted about my accent; the radiologist gave me a wide smile. “I just want to thank you all for being so nice,” I remember saying, then I was drifting off on a cloud of chemical bliss.
After that, I floated in and out, vaguely aware of a fabric screen inserted over my abdomen and of Brian on the other side, squinting through an eyepiece. At one point I tried making conversation, as if we’d been thrown together at a cocktail party. “Where did you stay in London?” I asked, and his face tensed. “Just let me do my job, all right?” “Ha ha,” I thought, “I should leave him alone.” I was certainly a little bit loopy.
Next thing, I was opening my eyes and staring at a clock high on a wall. Where the hell was I? It took a second before it came flooding back: liver biopsy, hospital, cancer, no return. This realization was coupled with such a sharp, crippling sense of despair that I almost wanted to regain unconsciousness. Luckily D was there, Starbucks cup in hand, looking so happy to see me that I rallied. “You’ve been out for two whole hours,” he said. I felt shaky, but glad to be over the hurdle. It was six o’clock: we’d extended the stay of a babysitter who was supposed to leave at four. All I wanted was to go home, but I needed to be monitored for another hour.
An hour later, hooked up to a drip, I walked around the recovery room with a nurse asking me questions. Apparently I passed the test, because he took me back to my bed, unhooked the IV and told me I could dress. Relief washed through me, but before I could enjoy it, I felt a sudden, overwhelming wave of nausea: it seemed to penetrate every nook of my body. I had just enough time to say, “Wow, I feel kind of…” before I blacked out.
For all of our individual high points—travel, marriage, the birth of a child—there are corresponding low points. Into each life some rain must fall, etc. etc. I’ve been privileged to have a life largely devoid of such lows: born in a Western country, to a middle-class family, without physical or mental handicaps. Married to an intelligent and empathetic man, with kids—Thing 1 and Thing 2—who are healthy and smart, and who occasionally deign to look up from their screens.
But now, I opened my eyes and again, nothing made sense. There were three alarmed-looking people hovering over me: beyond them, a fluorescent light, a clock high on a wall. Where was I? I glanced down and saw a hospital gown, a dirty floor. I felt humiliated, like a hobo with a police flashlight aimed at my eyes.
And then it came back again: Cancer. Metastasis. Hospital. The last forty-eight hours flashed through my mind in snippets, like a montage in a very depressing documentary. Phone calls, CT scans, crying jags. Wretchedness soaked my bones: I’d embarked on the S.S. Cancer and it was steaming toward the horizon. All I could do was wave and shout, and hope my loved ones would hear me above the engine’s roar.
Because I’d knocked my head on the floor when I fell, I was tested neurologically to see if I’d had a seizure. When I demonstrated good coordination and could name the president (hey, I could have done the Supreme Court justices too!) it was decided I could be discharged. Elated, I was dressing when I suddenly felt another wave of nausea come on. This time, I got through two whole sentences: “I feel nauseous again. I’m going to lie back.” I woke to D’s voice saying, “You fainted again.” Two strikes: I was out. They admitted me to the hospital overnight.
There’s a name for this kind of fainting: it’s called a vasovagal syncope. Basically, something stressful triggers the nervous system, and it glitches. Veins in the legs widen, and blood pools there, causing blood pressure to drop precipitously. The body then faints so that blood can start flowing to the brain again.
My trigger, obviously, is medical procedures—especially if they turn out to be more involved or unpleasant than anticipated. On the day of the liver biopsy, background stress was a factor: the previous, life-changing forty-eight hours suddenly caught up with me. Up until then I’d been powering through, running on a heady cocktail of bravado and denial. My mind wasn’t fully in the game yet, and maybe my body needed to give it a wake-up call.
That night in the hospital might actually go down as the worst night of my life. Once they found a room for me, I was fitted with pneumatic socks that inflated every minute or so, making any attempt at sleep impossible. D left, so he could be home in the morning to talk to the kids and answer their questions. The night nurse, Brianna, was a Midwesterner who, every time she checked my vitals, said, “I just have to scan your super-cool bracelet” in a sing-song voice that made me want to strangle her.
Most distressingly, I had a roommate who was suffering terribly. The curtain between us was drawn, so I couldn’t see her, but I could sure hear her. She was moaning, and vomiting every fifteen minutes or so. She’d had a myomectomy to remove a large uterine fibroid, and clearly hadn’t tolerated it well. I felt awful for her, and awful for myself—so much so that at around 4 a.m. I called out (as much from desperation as compassion), “Hey neighbor, I can’t sleep and I hear you can’t either. If you want to chat, I’m available.” There was a brief silence before a whispery answer came. “Thank you. I don’t feel well enough. Maybe in the morning.”
Misery, in this case, did not love company. The next five hours felt like as many days in a Chinese prison.
Having never stayed overnight in hospital before, I wasn’t aware of the tedious process of being discharged. It took until almost noon the next day, before which I was visited by a neurologist (with four medical students in tow), an X-ray technician, an administrator, and a resident doctor who looked about eighteen. “I’ve barely ever been sick in my life, and now I have Stage IV cancer,” I told him. His face paled as he acknowledged, stammeringly, that this must be hard.
Finally—though not before I’d considered ripping it out myself—the day nurse removed the IV and told D and me that we could go. One slow, bumpy taxi ride later, we arrived back at our apartment, filled with dirty laundry and uncleaned-up toys and restless kids.
I’d never been so glad to be home in my life.