[img]2553|right|||no_popup[/img]Perched pertly on an examination table this morning in a brightly lighted clinic room, she looked so normal in her pale blue scrubs. Swinging her legs, an overtly carefree smile wreathed her pretty face, illumined her dark, always well-tended, hair.
So robust, so all-American. On the outside.
That achingly deceptive appearance, which desultorily can feed you soaring hope, made the doctor’s frank pronouncement, that we have limited time, the more unpalatable to digest.
After Dr. M gripped my shoulder while saying that, I wanted to whirl away in the opposite direction. I would dash through the long fifth-floor corridor, hunt down a reputable doctor who would offer a palmier prognosis, buttress our hopes.
Dr. M almost was horrified and certainly disappointed that Diane still is working at her nurse practitioner profession, which she craves.
“Work? Why are you still working?” Dr. M asked. “Now is the time to do what you always have wanted to do. Travel. See the world.”
Equally sensitive and sensible, Dr. M carries two important recommendations – she is a mother with enough seasons in catastrophic diseases to tenderly, sympathetically share the devastating pain of patients and families when evaluating the demon that has invaded the body.
Behind my wife’s shiny exterior, the roaring furnace of a fairly rare disease roams at will through her broken body. As if stalking prey, the vicious villain packs the iron-willed determination of a crazed father desperately raiding garbage cans, seeking out victuals for his starving young family.
ALS is unbeatable, unstoppable, doctors tell us.
If any factor could be worse, it is that no medication exists to halt or even slow its fang-baring progress.
Wait and waste, one doctor said.
Surely that cannot be.
