The Surgeon's Office

After my parents' diagnoses and my father's passing, there was a short lull during which it seemed that there weren't any serious emergencies requiring my attention. This was a relief, as I don't think I had it in me to navigate any more crises. But the compounding of one situation after the next gave me a perpetual sense of being on edge, of waiting for the other shoe to drop. Every month that my hormones changed and my breasts would swell, I became paranoid about new masses growing, even as one year added to another of my state of remission. Every time a migraine cropped up or a stomach ache lasted more than a day, I became increasingly aware of how the smallest symptoms created a worry, a fear of something larger looming.

It is one of the ways in which I was intolerant to people who made comments about a person "beating cancer" or being "cancer free," as anybody who had spent time in the culture of oncology understood full well that cancer doesn't disappear. It only goes into undetectable remission.

I did not want to become a hypochondriac. I wanted to be proportionately mindful of listening to one's body. I had also developed a rather bitter taste in my mouth for things in the wellness sphere that sounded soothing but had no empirical backing. Before I developed a disdain for what would later become the MAHA movement, I stopped listening to the train of thought that claimed "everything happened for a reason" and generally speaking, wasn't able to stay in relationship with people who espoused this line of thinking or people in their midst. It was a main reason some of my closest relationships dissipated. In their eyes, I was too cynical, and in mine, they were ignorant. It amazed me how political the language of medicine could become.

Returning to the ways in which I started noticing signs and symptoms in my loved ones. K had been diagnosed with a heart murmur years ago, but by the time COVID hit and his second child was born, going to the doctor wasn't a priority. This happens all too frequently as we get older—the further away we are from going to that appointment, the less likely we are to go.

In the middle of a summer day, K's stomach ache brought him to keel over on the floor of the entryway to his apartment building, which meant a cab ride to the ER—him howling and me attempting to communicate with the seemingly apathetic front desk staff that this was in fact an emergency. Six hours later we knew little more than when we had come in, post MRI and CT scan that showed nothing. The next step was for him to finally follow up with his cardiologist to take a look at the condition of that pesky asymptomatic murmur. It turned out that the murmur required more attention than either one of us could have imagined, and that was how we were ushered to the front of the line with the cardiac surgeon.

I'll never forget the appointment for which I put on the navy blue Armani suit.

On the day of, we waited briefly before being invited into the surgeon's palatial office overlooking Fifth Avenue. He had not yet arrived as K and I sat down at an enormous dark oak conference table. K made a sound of relief—conference tables were something he was familiar with. I looked around the room to see a Glenn Ligon, a de Kooning, and what appeared to be a small drawing by Bono himself. I had spent seven years working at one of New York's most prominent art handling companies and project-managed countless postwar and contemporary masterpieces for collectors, galleries, and museums. I knew the art world intimately, and I knew the value and rarity of the works in this man's collection.

The surgeon confidently entered the room. K and I both stood up to shake his hand, and as we sat down, I complimented the massive Ligon hanging across from us—knowing full well this would open the conversation in a very different way than if we launched into the description of K's Barlow's disease.

There is a certain type of superstar physician that exists in contemporary culture. The surgeon fit the bill. He had coauthored the preeminent textbook on mitral valve repair. He had performed thousands of these operations. He was committed to ensuring that his patients would undergo the procedure with discretion so that they could get back to their oftentimes big, important corporate jobs. K and he spoke briefly about golfing, and then the surgeon shared how he had performed surgery on Bono before he went on tour and nobody was the wiser—that Bono had even mentioned the surgeon in his book, which he proudly showed us, of course autographed by the rock star.

During our meeting of almost two hours, several people knocked on the door to the massive office. The surgeon waved his hand with a gesture indicating he couldn't be bothered. It wasn't entitled or annoying as much as it was awe-striking, powerful. The man, the art collection, the thousands of surgeries he had performed, the Fifth Avenue view, and his own glowing skin and smile—his sense of satisfaction in what he had accomplished was, in short, powerful.

There was not a moment during which I was not an active part of the conversation, of the glowing way in which the surgeon assured us that the procedure would be seamless and K would be back to work in no time. And yet there was a part of me sitting as if a fly on the wall, watching it all happen like a movie scene. K's pale blue button-down under a casual but expensive sweater, the black Glenn Ligon on the wall, and my own navy blue Nehru-collared jacket shimmering under the conference room lights.

As we wrapped up our cinematic meeting with the surgeon—confirming that K would be scheduled for his surgery in just a few short months (later to learn, not a day too soon)—I could not help but think how the whole endeavor would have taken place if I was sitting there in a floral dress, or in jeans and a T-shirt, or in a suit that wasn't designer. Would those knocks on the door to the office suddenly seem much more important to the surgeon? Would K's life-saving surgery have been scheduled in time?