Christmas Is Coming

Santa
Originally uploaded by Tokyorosa

The Photo

The photo is a hasty, blurred photo of the actual Santa Claus as he made a hasty, blurred visit this morning to the waiting patients, friends and family at the Cancer Treatment Center where I was sitting with my friend Ellen.

The little girl in the green sweater standing in front of Santa was a whipsmart, bilingual five-year-old kindergartener from Kansas who was waiting with her mother while her grandmother had chemotherapy.

As soon as the little girl heard the jingling sleigh bells, she got really excited. "I wonder if it's Santa," I said to her, and her mother chuckled. The little girl stood up and sat down. The bells got louder and the little girl's eyes got bigger. When Santa turned the corner into the waiting room, the little girl jumped up and ran around in little circles. The mother encouraged her to go and talk to Santa, and I hastily dug my cell phone out of my pocket to take this picture.

After Santa's exciting pass through the waiting room, Ellen was called by the nurse, about an ninety minutes before her appointment. Ellen was planning on chemo today and had to get her blood drawn about an hour before, so we had planned on stopping by the lab at about nine and then getting some breakfast while we waited for her eleven a.m. appointment with her doctor. After the doctor saw her, she'd have the chemo and another friend would pick her up and take her home.

We were a little confused by Ellen's being called early and Ellen explained to the nurse that not only had she not had her blood drawn, but that she was waiting for Ruth, her partner, to arrive. (Ruth always joins her for the doctor's appointments but, because she has to take time off from work, can't stay for the duration of Ellen's chemo.) The nurse said that there were three no-shows and so they were far ahead of schedule. (I was, like, who no-shows for chemotherapy?)

And--I was going to write out the whole story, but I'm tired. I mean, I really am drained from a single day observing Ellen's routine. At Ellen's invitation I sat in on the visit with the doctor, who had the unenviable task of having to tell Ellen that, while the old tumors were responding reasonably well to the chemotherapy, the most recent CAT scan had revealed a new, large tumor in a lymph node near Ellen's heart. As a result, Ellen's current course of chemo was going to be halted and a new course was going to be plotted.

The new course of chemo will likely include a drug Doxorubicin (or its liposome-encapsulated cousin, Doxil) that is nicknamed The Red Devil. You can imagine the side-effects of that little charmer. At least Ellen won't have to worry about losing her hair: The platinum-based chemo took care of that months ago.

Anyway, Ellen's spirits are actually pretty good though later she said to me over a lunch of moussaka at Olympia Cafe that the seriousness of today's news hadn't yet hit her. And I suppose I hope it never does.

I was just so emotionally and physically drained after dropping her off at home (where she was to await a call from her insurance company about her long-term disability insurance) that I had just enough energy to take Sam on a much abbreviated walk and then change into my pajamas and drop into bed at the late hour of fifteen 'til four in the afternoon. I can't imagine how Ellen and Ruth do it.

The Book

Part of the reason I was so tired was because I was up most of the night finishing The Climb: Tragic Ambitions on Everest by Anatoli Boukreev and George DeWalt. While many people think Krakauer's Into Thin Air is a much more polished presentation of the 1996 Everest disaster, the people who think that are probably the types who think graphic novels are novels. They aren't readers is what I mean. As a matter of fact, I found the Boukreev and DeWalt book to be far more detailed and interesting than Krakauer's book. But explaining the comparative literary value of sports writing isn't why I'm wasting all these words. What I'm really trying to do is to pull this paragraph around so that I can quote from The Climb. But it's late and I'm tired and I'm having a little trouble bringing this entry into line. It just isn't happening. So I'll try to long-story-short it.


Here's the setup and the quote.

Boukreev did climb Everest again, almost exactly one year after the 1996 disaster in which he performed heroically and was castigated by Krakauer. During that time--the year between Boukreev's visits to Everest--the body of Scott Fisher (the expedition leader who had hired Boukreev in 1996 and whom Boukreev had tried--and failed--to save) had lain exposed on the mountain. Boukreev, after summiting Everest in 1997, descended to Fisher's body. With the help of a fellow climber, Boukreev covered Fisher and marked the grave with an ice axe. (It's not standard procedure to remove the bodies of the climbers who die on the Everest; most bodies are either left exposed or dropped into crevasses.) Of the act of burying Fisher, Boukreev writes:

I asked Evgeny [a fellow climber] to help me with this sad job. We covered him [Fisher] with snow and rocks [...] This last respect was for a man I feel was the best and brightest expression of the American persona. I think often of his brilliant smile and positive manner. I am a difficult man and I hope to remember him always by living a little more by his example.

I don't know if you could ask for any more humility in word or deed from a someone who performed heroically in a time of disaster and who later suffered greatly for his good acts.

Boukreev himself died in an avalanche on Annapurna in the Himalaya about six months later, on Christmas day.