Home Sweet Home

NOTE : while udergoing treatment, the patients' life is full of empty waiting. Waiting for test results to return, waiting for the next twinge, or weird pain that might signal something new - which is usually bad. As much as these things have ill effects on the body, they make for bad images in the mind as well. Sometimes these hidden ones are hard to fix and impossible to treat with conventional measures....
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Chapter 28 : A rest at home
The taxi ride to the airport, the flight home and even the normally exilerating drive in his Porsche went by in a flash. Reg was exhausted, all he wanted to do was to get inside, strip down and get in the tank and let the biomemtic fluid comfort him, rejuvenate hime, make him whole again.
It was nearly midnight by the time he got home. The first thing he noticed was Polly's jacket hanging on the coat rack, her carry on bag next to it. Lucy's bag was tossed on the floor wit her shoues as usual. Reg's heart nearly jumped. "They are back. Thank God! I have missed them soo much.
He climbed the stairs, practically asleep on his feet. He walked down the hall to  the mater bedroom and quietly opened the door. There in lay his beautiful light, made even more enticing by the lingere she was wearing how she was striped in the moonlight coming through the blinds. He madly wanted to make love to her, to show here how he felt, but he could feel his body cramping up, from head to toe. So instead of an evening of live making he kissed her on the cheek, thanked her for coming home and off he went to his recovery room on the first floor.
Once there he tapped on the computer, it woke up and as he prepared for immersion in the tank, he saw as video message in his in box from Dr. Salzman. He tapped it, opened a bottle of Gatorade as the image loaded and tapped, 'play'.

The image of Dr. Salzman was beaming. "Reg, you have done it again! After your treatment, Tim's cancer was gone!!! Head to toe! We are going to keep him a few days for final observationan and confirmatioinal tests, but, Man, you did it a gain.!"

Reg set the gatorade aside, adjusted the camera on top of his computer and talked back to the device.
"Thanks doc. Isn't that what those envelopes you give me are for?" he smiled as he opened the one infront of him.... 'Sweet! another $50 grand.'
Dr. Salzman continued, "Tim, when are we going to collaborate on a paper? You know that we'd gain so much notariety we could open our own treatmet center?"

Reg shook his head, "No thanks, again doc, I'm really just happy to help. I don't want to become any more of a freakshow than I already am.... remember what happened when that video ran of me working and how much damage control you guys had to do to make it seem like a hoax!"

Four months ago...

In the hospital room, Reg was undergoing an awful battle with a demon causing AML on a patient. In fact, Reg was in the middle of being tossed around the room by the beast. He was losing his grip  on the creature, it was winning.

All the thrashing in the room drew the attention of the third shift janitor who, could not believe his eyes when he looked into the patients room. He immediately aimed his smartphone into the room where, seemingly a man in a labcoat was being thrown around the room, held against the ceiling above the patient, yelling, and the patient below him was also thrashing around in the bed below.

The janitor got almost three minutes of video, before he heard the door of the elevator open up, and a group of doctors and interns moved onto the floor. He pocketed the phone and rolled on down the floor, dry mopping as he went.

What happened next nearly ended with the janitor in prison, the hospital in a lawsuit, and Reg identified as some kind of nut-case, instead of just being labeled, 'an unidentified nursing assistant.'

The headline had read, "Unknow Force Throws Doctor Around Room"

The hospital put out a story about un-ruly inters with too much time on their hands, trying to make a zombie movie. From then on, much more care and discrestion was used whenever Reg was invited to help a group of doctors attempt to save a patient.

Back at his computer...

Reg was trying to end the conversation with Salzman, so he could get into the tank and get some rest. "Thanks, Doc... no problems... You know where I am...." then he paused. "Hopefully you can give me a couple of weeks off. I gotta lot of family rebuilding to do here at home."

The doctor replied, "O.K.Reg. Take care." with a click his imaged disappeared from the screen.

Reg took a quick shower, toweled off, grabbed the stereo remote, clicked to the reggae channel and settled into his tank.

"God, this feels soooo good. So, good." Reg wen to sleep to she sounds of Black Uhur, and slept like a stone in the bottom of a pool....

Reg had been sleeping - to him it seemed like a whole day - when he was woken by the gleeful shouts of his daughter as she came running into the room. Polly had been trying however unsucessfully to teach their daughter about knocking on doors before bursting into rooms, and about letting people get their rest, but it appears none of her lessons mattered when it came to the love of her daddy! In many ways it made her truly happy to see them together.

"Hi! Daddy! See me and Mommy are home again. She said she missed you. Me tooooo.!" Lucy exclaimed.

Reg had just sat upright when his daughter had jumped up and wrapped her arms around her gel-coated Daddy.

Polly laughed and shouted, "No look at your self, young lady, you are coated in Daddy's gel! Now you have to go change before we can go shopping.!"

Polly stood there with her hand on her hips, enjoying seeing them together, even if it meant more laundry for her to do, "Finish up the hugging, go change and meet me in the car."

Lucy let-go of her daddy with a sticky, schloopy sound, and went off to her room.

Polly walked to the tank and pulled up the stool to the edge.

"Reg, are you glad to see me?" she said, her eyes looking happy.
"Of course, this place is just too big and empty without the two of you here." Reg said, reaching out to give her a hug.
"So, what have you decided?" she quizzed.
"Well, I am not going to give up my new work, it is too important." Reg began.
Polly look disappointed, "Reg, you promised!"
Reg continued, "What I will do is start screening cases a bit more before I leave. Some patients are less terminal than the docs would leave me to believe."
"Good, I am glad you are home.", Polly reached out and gave her husband a hug.
With a quick twist, he had flipped her into the tank with him, the blue memetic gel covering them both....
Laughing now, Reg winked at his wife.... "Wanna wrestle, Baby?"




 

The Turmoil of the Hero

AUTHORS' NOTE: It has been nearly a year since my last entry on the story of Chemo-Radiation Man, and a lot of real-life, cancer-related events have occurred in my life, which partially explains the lack of new material here. Rather than review the last year, I would just suggest that if you ARE interested in what has been happening, that you check out  my SECONDBATTLE blog for the details.

Meanwhile, in the life of Reg Ulargy - Chemo-Radiation Man...

CHAPTER 27 : "Your flight leaves at 9:00 a.m."

     When we last visited Reg Ulargy, he was just beginning to come to grips with the new reality that his cancer experience, and subsequent treatment, has had on his life, and on the life of those around him....

Much like a WW-II fighter pilot who kept track of kills, Reg had done the same with his battles against the cancer-demons, but instead of painting flags of enemy nations on the fuselage of a plane, he simply wrote the names in one of two columns on the whiteboard hung above his recovery tank in what used to be the study of his home.

About a month or two into his new life as the unwilling superhero he discovered that running back and forth to the hospital to recover from each battle was simply not practical, so with the help of his medical team he had undertaken a remodeling project that called for the installation of his biomemedic gel tank, medical monitors, computer connections to the oncology team at the hospital and a small locker room, complete with a shower and changing room.

Staring now at the white board, sipping on a strong cup of Ethiopian Yigarcafe, Reg counted - in the 'Victory' column, on the left were 23 names, in the 'Loss' column, on the right were 4 names. At the very bottom of this column was written in red, and in parentheses was 'Polly??'

Initially, Polls had been very supportive of Regs' new found life as a cancer-curing super-hero, but it had worn on her. Even in the days when Reg had made his living as a prominent accountant - which required lots of extra hours at the office and at home in what used to be his study, she still saw more of her husband then, than she had in the last six months in his new role.

Reg sipped his coffee and remembered their last 'conversation', if you could call it that...

"This is it, Reg. I'm finished! This is the LAST time you are going to disappoint me and Lucy." she had just hustled Lucy into the car, buckled her in and slammed the door, turning her pent up frustration at Reg.
"Come on Polly, you know how it is. What am I supposed to do? Leave in the middle of a procedure and let some one DIE?"
He continued as he made his way around to the drivers side of her BMW, "I have a responsibility to these people."
"You have a RESPONSIBILITY to your FAMILY!" she responded, buclkling into her seat.
"You barely made the last five minutes of Lucy's performance and missed the last three shows all together. We are going to stay at my mothers' house until you figure out what is more important, being a damn Superhero, or being a father and husband. I love you, Reg, I really do, but I can't depend on you anymore to be there for US when WE need you."

The pinging of his computer notification snapped him back to the present, Reg rolled the metal stool from the edge of the tank to his computer workstation, clicked the mouse, and the screen lit up with the logo of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Institute in the middle of the screen. Another click and a video conferencing window opened up.

"Good morning, Mr. Ulargy. We have a special case for you.", it was Dr. Larry Salzberg, whose specialty was liver metastases. Reg had a felling of what was coming next, and it was not pretty.
"Hello, Larry." Reg said, settling in as he finished his coffee, setting the empty cup aside.
"What's up?"
"I have a patient here that needs your special help.", the doctor clicked away at a monitor just off camera.
"I will try to give you the short version. 48 year old male. His cancerous colon was removed a year ago, mets have appeared now in his liver and lung. We treated with the first two lines of chemotherapy, as is standard, with no improvement. In fact, he has gotten worse in the past several months."
Reg listened as he reached for the brew button on his Keurig to start a fresh cup of coffee.
"So, I take it the next step for him is some clinical trial or other? Why call me?"
"Well, Reg, actually the next drug trial we'd want him on doesn't open for about six months, I simply don't think he has that much time to wait. Reg, he needs your help." Dr. Salzberg looked down at a folder, flipped some pages.
"I have your room ready on the ward here. I have you booked for the 9:00 on Delta, we look forward to your help. See you this afternoon.

With one hand Reg grabbed the fresh mug of coffee, with the other he flipped open his cell phone and hit the preset for Polly at work.

A few moments later, he was greeted by his wifes' pleasing voice, always so nice to hear first thing in the morning, "Good morning, Polls. How are you this morning?"

A pause, as if she could tell what was coming, "Fine, Reg. I just got back from dropping Mom off at the salon, and Lucy at school. What is it?"

"Just checking to see what Lucy has coming up at school in the next few days", Reg said, trying to delay the news he new he had to deliver.

"Nothing special on her calendar, just the usual, school and lessons," Polly responded, the sound of dishes being done in the background.

"O.K. then. I just got a call to go to Sloan-Kettering, it might take a few days to sort this one out." Reg waited for the scathing blast that he was sure to get.

"Whatever, Reg. Just call when you get there, and try to let me know when you will be back, Lucy worries about you and misses you." Polly said, the dish washing sounds had stopped. Reg pictured here leaning against the counter her hair flowing down in front of her, the moisture from the dish washing condensing on her chest, the first button of her blouse undone.

"Do YOU miss me, Polls?" he asked.
A pause, "Yes, Reg. I do."
"I will call when I get settled on the ward," Reg said.
"Fine. Talk to you later," there was a quick click as she ended the call.


CHAPTER 28 : Once More Into The Breach

Reg made his way through the airport, took the hour long flight to JFK, hopped a cab to the hospital and checked into his room on the ward, a few moments later Dr. Salzberg showed up, iPad in hand, tapping, bring up details of the case.

"Good afternoon, Reg. I hope you're not too exhausted from the rush of the trip, I'd really like to begin as soon as possible.", he looked Reg, over.

"How much time do you need to prepare?" the doctor asked.
"Give me ten minutes and a good cup of coffee and I will be ready." Reg said.

Reg had learned over the past few months how to focus his mind and his body so that when he entered the room of a patient he could fully identify the creature he would be facing. He could now identify just how the creature gripped its victim. At this point, the battle would begin in earnest.

He really hated the metastatic creatures, they were the worst. First he had to identify their origin, in this case he had help. The doctors had identified the original cancer as colon. The next difficult part was the nature of the creatures as their tentacles reached throughout the body, gripping organs, blood vessels, nerves. Here, the battle would toughen, and his skills as a fighter tested.

Taking a final deep breath, and cradling the cup of hospital coffee, he headed down the hall to the patients' room. As he approached, he could see the darkness, the absence of the normal healthy light that surrounded healthy people instead the light he faced was a murky brown, the color of muddied river water that seemed to pool around his feet and pour out from the patients' bed, slowly, like a fog.

In the bed lay a man, propped up on a couple pillows reading the latest issue of GT Porsche magazine...the same one, in fact, that Reg had in his briefcase in his room down the hall. He chuckled and thought that this was a patient of his own heart, one worth his best efforts.

Above the bed hovered the creature. A pock-marked, undulating brown being, with dozens of blood red tentacles dangling over the patient. The tentacles seemed concentrated in a tight cord over the man's abdomen and chest, throbbing, pulling the life force up to the hovering mass.

Reg walked over to the patient, careful not to touch him, or the creature, until he was ready to start the battle.

"Hello, my name is Reg Ulargy, I am here to see if I can help the doctors in fighting your cancer," he waited for a response.

Folding over his magazine, and setting it on the side-table, the man tried to reach out to shake Reg's hand, but was quickly stopped by the IV hoses attached to his arm.

"Oh, sorry. I forget all the hoses. I'm Tim. Very nice to meet you. My doctor said they were bringing in a specialist to help me, that must be you." Tim said, smiling.

Continuing, Tim said, "Before you get started, I just wanted to say that I am ready for anything to beat this cancer. I have been poked at, radiated, drugged, operated on, and scanned. I am not about to stop now. I am up for what ever treatment options are available."

Encouraging. Reg thought, a fighter, that will help. "Good, because what I am about to try to explain to you will seem more like a science fiction story than medicine, but if you are willing to let me try, I will do my best to help."

The patient looked back at Reg with a gaze that signaled both hope and concern, "O.K., shoot. What do I need to do?"

"All you need to do, is lie back, and think about defeating your disease. Let me do the rest." Reg said, moving closer to the bed and getting comfortable in his chair. Taking one last sip of coffee, Reg reached out for his patient.

"Tim, give me your hand."

The patient reached out to Reg with his left hand. Reg took it into both of his. For an instant Tim thought he saw something hovering above him, and some kind of ropes dangling down, then he drifted off to sleep, thinking of a cure.

The instant Reg took hold of Tim's hand he felt the creature above the bed jerk. Immediately it emitted an ear splitting moan that nearly knocked Reg from his chair. A shimmering silver aura, that Reg was now used to enveloped the creature, Reg, and the room - allowing Reg to move freely to do battle with the creature.

As Reg circled the bed, new tendrils emerged from the top of the creature, snapping out at Reg, and when they made contact delivered an electrical charge that nearly knocked him over. Reg darted out of range of the next attack, another tendril moved in and Reg raised his hand and a blue light emitted from his palm, snapping back and whithering the tendril.

The battle continued like this for what seemed to Reg to be over an hour. The creature attempting to entrap Reg and attach to his own cancer cells, while Reg struggled to get at the cord of tendrils at the patients abdomen, ripping them out one at a time.

With each tendril destroyed the creature above shrank, becoming weaker, until Reg was finally able to get both hands on it, yanking it from over the patient. Focusing all his energy Reg delivered a final double handed strike and the creature withered and vanished in a shimmer of silver light. The room expanded, the shimmer dissipated and Reg fell, exhausted into the chair next to the patients bed.

The next thing Reg felt was someone shaking him by the shoulder, "Reg? Reg, are you alright?" It was Dr. Salszberg's voice.

"You were under for over an hour, we didn't know whehter or not to interfere or not, then you let out a scream and collapsed into the chair." the doctor explained.

"I...I...Think...so." Reg said, trying to sit upright. "I don't think I can stand up though."

"I'll get a nurse to bring a wheel chair, and take you to your room." the doctor turned towards the door. "Nurse, hustle up a wheel chair will you?"

"Take Mr. Haskins to radiology and get me a new CT scan, chest to pelvis, stat!" as the doctor barked out the order another nurse and orderly appeared and began to wheel the bed out of the room.

The nurse helped Reg into his bed and he collapsed quickly into a deep sleep.

Reg didn't know how long he slept, but as he woke, he noticed it was well into the night, as he tried to sit up, he saw at his side, the golden shimmer of Gloria sitting next to him, as always, the pleasant smile and comforting, grandmotherly aura surrounding her and enveloping him. As she spoke, Reg felt invigorated, energized enough to sit up.

"Once again, deary, you have done well. You are getting quite good at this! I am sooo proud of how far you have come on your journey." she said, patting his hand gently.

"But, the patient? How...is...he?" Reg struggled to continue.
"Did, I win, is the creature gone?"

"Yes, yes, don't you worry. The creature has been defeated, another chance for you to add another name to the 'Victory' column back at home.

Looking at Reg rather scornfully now, Gloria continued, "I think it has come time for you to make some decisions. It has also come time for me to let go, to let you grow."
"I have been watching you as you have grown into your new role, saving people, and have noticed the strain that this has put on your family."
"You, young man,are in danger of losing that lovely wife of yours if you do not discover some kind of balance between what it is you DO here, and what you need to do at home. I cannot help you in this, but can only say that I see a strength in you that can accomplish both." she explained.

Reg, sitting now and clearing his head, listened to Gloria. "Yes, I know. I have to figure out how to make room for both in my life. You have always been there to guide me on this side, but back in my day to day to life, it is just me."

"Don't be silly, sweetie, you have LOTS of help in the other world, just look around and see the people who love you, who need you. You will see their auras' strengthen as you learn to depend on THEM to help you." as Gloria spoke she reached behind her neck and undid the jewel that had always been there.

"Here, take this, you have earned it. It will allow you to draw on the power of one world while you are in the other, a way to recharge, as it were when you need to." she placed the necklace around Reg's neck and sat back, admiring her student like a proud teacher.

"Rest now, deary. Go back home tomorrow and take your family out to dinner, and tell them just how much  you need them and love them. You will be surprised how long they have been waiting for you to tell them that."

"I will keep an eye on you, and will see you on your next adventure!

Home at Last, and a New Name

NOTE: The path to cure or remission in cancer is at best a long highway, with occasional road bumps, or a torturous journey, bereft with breakdowns and set backs. The process usually consists of an initial surgery and recovery period, followed by a course of radiation and/or chemotherapy, then a period of 'rest and recovery, during which - I have discovered - the body heals, and the patient slips back into his or her normal life, often times forgetting that they are, in fact, still sick -- no one has pronounced them cured, or in remission! Then just when the patient thinks it's over, you enter a second, longer treatment phase that my include new medications, new side effects and new challenges. For some the new treatment may involve intense daily treatments, and equally intense effects, or they may be spread out over months, easing the effects and allowing the patient to handle things a bit easier.

CHAPTER 25: Come on, Lets go home

Reg awoke, to find himself surrounded, again by his medical team. Doctors, nurses, and his family, Polly and daughter Lucy, who seemed oddly happy, her healthy yellow light beaming from her body, Polly the pleasing green. Once again he squinted to get the colors to go away, but after a moment, reailzed the effort was pointless, and again, tried to begin living with this new visiual reality. From now on, he will see people and the auras around them and will know more about their health than they do.

Sitting there drinking the amazing coffee that is Amazon Nectar - snuck in by nurse Clarice, once she discovered that they shared the love of really good coffee... Clarice handed him the cup and from her arm eminated a floral pink and yellow light, "Man. That's gonna take a lot of getting used to." he thought he had said to him self, but Clarice picked up on it....

"What's that chile? What's gonna take gettin' used to? Me bringing you dis wonderful coffee? Ooooo Lord! It's good!" she continued, "But, since you goin' home today, somebody else gonna have to be your pusher-man!"

Reg nearly spat the coffee over the clean green robe, and onto the Xacto suit on his chest.."Going home? Really? But what about..." he waved his coffee free hand down his body indicating his new 'skin'.

"Don't you be worryin' none, chile. The doctor say your clothes will cover most everything, lessin' you plan on going shirtless, or skinny dipping in that pond of yours." Clarice said, as she swiftly began removing various monitoring patches, tubes and I.V.s. "The doctor will be here soon to talk about getting you home.

"Home," Reg thought, sipping carefully on the hot coffee. Maybe it was the suit, maybe it was just the drugs, but he could FEEL the invigorating effects of the coffee course through his veins. When he opened his eyes, the world seemed brighter, like someone had released a mist of light-intensifying glitter in the air around him... "What the hell, now?"

He sipped some more coffee, the light intensity returned, the auras of the people in the room intensified too, "Hmmm," he thought, "Coffee is an enhancer! Who would have guessed. Maybe this won't be all that bad?"

Lucy, noticing that her Dad was awake, cam rushing the bed, "Daddy, Daddy, You're awake! Mommy has your stuff packed! The Doctor says you can go home!" I can't wait, I got video from the concert you missed when you were sick." Lucy was tugging on his robe sleeve, trying to get him sit up. As he pulled his arm, the rob slipped down his shoulder, the suit offering no resistance to the fabric of the robe. Lucy jumped back, with a start, "Aghhhh, Daddy! What's wrong with your skin?"

Feeling bad for his little girl, Reg reached for her only to have her step away to Polls lap a few paces away. "It's o.k., darling, Daddy has a special suit that he has to wear now to help fight off his cancer... you remember, last week when he was in the big tank....?"

"Yes, Mommy, the green jello tank?" Lucy asked, calming down in her moms arms.
Polly continued, loud enough so Reg could hear and simple enough that she cold understand. "He has to wear the new suit all the time, it makes him better and keeps him healthy.

Lucy looked back and forth from the bed to Polly and to Reg. "Does it HURT, Daddy? The suit?"

Reg motioned her to the end of bed beside him where he gave her a big hug. "No sweetie, it doesn't hurt, but it does itch a lot." She smiled up at him.. O.K. then, let's go home!!!!

Polly zipped up the suitcase, Reg slipped on his blue Addidas, grabbed his bag of hospital paperwork and goodies, took Polly in one hand and Lucy in the other. They nodded to his nurses and doctors on their way, chatting and saying goodbye to his treatment team... "God, I FINALLY get to get he hell OUT of here."

As they turned the corner to the long-term parking lot, Reg, looked at his wife. "Polls, keys please."
She chuckled, "You are KIDDING me right? You are still hopped up on Anesthetic, Atavan and the chemo coming from your suit! You are not driving  $50,000 car by yourself!"

"I had Carmella pick it up last week, get it washed and put it in the garage at home." She motioned to the van at the curb. You, blue man, will be riding in the van, with me chaufferring you home today, and when you get there we have the guest room all set up for you...

Reg slipped into the passengers front seat, his wife went around the other side of the van, hopped in hit the gas and started the long drive home. With his window down, hair flipping around in the breeze.... he was asleep by they time the entered the express way.


CHAPTER 26: From The Mouths of Babes

Several days had passed since Reg returned home and during this time, he had noticed that, while he was happy to BE home, things seemed a bit 'off'. No surprise that his altered vision was making things a challenge, other more subtle things were going on. Polly and Lucy seemed much quieter, there seemed to be more 'hushed' conversations between them. Polly had become distant, less talkative to him, only wanting to take care of the basics of care as he recovered. Lucy on the other hand, was all about being the proper little nurse; fetching things, taking Daddy's temperature and as you can guess, always touching the Xacto suit...

"Daddy, what does the suit do again?" She sat, on the edge of the bed, running her hand over her dads arm, feeling the smooth, cool texture of the silk covered suit.

"Well, honey," Reg explained (again!), "It allows the doctors to give me my medication by simply coating the suit once a week or so. The suit is kind of like a sponge, it lets the medicine get everywhere all at once... with no needles or ports or other things that patients usually have to go through."

He saw that she had lost interest in his explanation after the word., "....my medication..." so he ventured a different explanation. "Lucy, I will tell you a secret...one that Mommy doesn't even know. Come closer."

"I think something happened when the suit got stuck on me, it lets Daddy see colorful glows from people and I THINK the colors tell me how healthy people are. AND I can cure them by touching them."

Now fully engaged, Lucy replied, "REALLY Daddy.... That is soooo cool... Hmmm what color am I? What color is Mommy..."

Reg chuckled at her renewed interest, "Well, you my darling are a bright yellow, like the sun."
"And Mommy?" lucy begged. "Well your Mom is a beautiful shade of green."

Lucy was quiet for a minute, "That's weird...." more quiet, Reg could see her thinking... Lucy was thinking now of sick people - the little girl the same age as her - in the hospital who had cancer, and then was cured. She thought she remembered her Daddy coming out of the girls room, she had thought he was just walking around.

"Daddy, back when you were in the hospital, there was girl down the hall from your room. What color was she?" Lucy enquired.

Reg was suprised that Lucy had noticed. How to tell his daughter that he had somehow CURED the little girl by defeating a demon he saw hovering over her bed???

"Wow, I didn't think you noticed I was on my walk then. Yes, I did visit her. Her color was a very dark yellow, like someone or something was trying to steal her light." looking at his daughters face for confusion, finding none, he continued.

"When I got to her bedside, there was a strange creature floating above her bed, he had his claws wrapped around her chest and head. I got angry, because I  could tell that this thing was hurting her."

Lucy watches with rapt attention, like her Dad is on an Episode of Dr. Who or something! "Uh, huh, yes..." is all she says.

"So I didn't really now what to do, so I put one hand on the little girls arm, with the other I pushed at the monster and shouted 'Get Off of HER!' and as soon as I did...it screamed, let go and vanished. I was suddenly really, really tired and then went back to my room...that's where you and Mommy saw me coming back." he completed the story.

"So," Lucy the thinker - he liked seeing her this way, it reminded him of Polly, always sorting things out,  "You touched the sick girl, and the monster, and she got better and the monster went away...?

Reg, thought for a moment too, "Yes, I guess so!"

Lucy brightened and smiled proudly at her Dad, "You know what Daddy? That makes you a SUPER HERO!!" She leapt to his arms, gave him a hug and hopped off the bed... "I gotta go tell Mommy!! My Daddy is a super hero."

Reg tried to protest, "Lucy, Lucy! come back here you silly goose!" she was out the door before he could protest again....

Reg sat there, drinking the amazing coffee that made the room shimmer, and thought a bout it for a minute... "Hmmm, a Super Hero? Maybe so."


As he sat there pondering his new label, running name through his head, after all he chuckled to himself, "A super hero has to have a name, right. Let's see; Blue Touch, Cancer Killer, Captain Chemo, Sickness Slayer.... No, No, No... Hmmm. The Chemical Man, The Blue Survivor...no, yuck."

A bit more coffee and it hit him, "I have been through surgery, chemotherapy and radiation, how could I combine them....Ah Ha! I have it 'Chemo-Radiation Man' "

He was laying there, puffing up his chest Super-hero style, whispering his new name, "Hi, I'm Chemo-Radiation Man'! Step aside and let me cure this child." when Polly came into the living room, with an armload of laundry. She did not look happy.... here green glow was tinged with flashes of red... a sign that Reg learned indicated that she was angry about something.

"You know, I don't mind doing your laundry, washing it, folding it, putting it away, because you have been tired, but could you please get it into the damn laundry shoot, Reg." She plopped the clean laundry on the couch, marched past him as he sat in his recliner.

"YOU can fold and put away this load, I am tired of it." she stormed off to the family room. Reg heard the click of the remote, the wind up of the television, and a few moments later, some sit-com or other filled the room with staged laughter.

Reg folded the laundry, went upstairs and went to bed, with thoughts of 'Chemo-Radiation Man' dancing in his head.

Now I See It.... Now YOU don't...

NOTE: The treatment of cancer is an involved, multi-stage process that forces the patient to exchange their previous life for a new one. For some the change is for the worse -- the ones that lose the battle, despite fighting with all their heart, and with the support of the best in medicine. For those that win the battle, the path to 'victory' is not easy. The path consists of three parts: initial diagnosis, treatment, remission. Given what we have learned about the human body and it's relationship to cancer, there are some in the medical community who are convinced that much like earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, cancer is neither totally predictable, nor totally curable, hence my use of the term 'remission' rather than 'cure'. Patients often agonize over the 'Why me?' syndrome. They spend hours looking back over their lives to try to determine what they did 'wrong', to end up with cancer. Many times this is an empty search, which is both frustrating and demoralizing, making it harder to keep a positive attitude when going through the treatments, and to have the confidence needed to help themselves in the fight.

Chapter 21: Special Side Effects

Once again Reg, dragged himself, from a deep sleep, to consciousness. Again, he finds himself immersed in the motion-limiting goo. "I remember. They called this stuff 'biomemetic' gel." Reg also remembered what kind of pain moving around in this stuff caused, so he stayed still, trying to remember what had happened before Nurse Clarice sent him off to sleep.

Somehow, the fabric that now substituted for his skin gave him the ability to not only 'see' illness, but when he touched the sick, he was able to 'see' into another dimension - a strange world inhabited by shadowy monsters that apparently caused sickness and robbed the life out of their victims. "Christ. If I ever mentioned this to anyone, they'd slap me in the looney bin for sure!"


As he lay there, eyes closed, recalling the rest of the events that had transpired he remembered the white-haired, flower dressed old lady that also seemed to exist only in the world between reality and disease. He also remembered he could not look directly at her, which was strange, but he also remembered here calming touch and soft even spoken voice that reminded him of a Sunday school teacher he once had. "Man, and if I tried to describe Gloria to anyone, they would throw away the key." 


Polly had been sitting at his side - Reg noticed the green glow that surrounded her - he was beginning to get used to that. Reg was trying to talk her, trying to tell her what he had seen, but all that came out was, "Gloria. Gloria!" 

Reg's outburst, once a woke her up. Startled awake she, she looked at her husband, suspended in the gel, then glanced at her watch.... 3:00 A.M.

"Reg, I'm here. I'm right here!" She leaned over the tank to look at her husband, letting him see that she was at his bed side. "Who is Gloria? You have mentioned her a couple times now. Is she a nurse? Is she a doctor?" This mystery woman was becoming a sore point for Polly. If he was keeping secrets from her, it would set them back months in their therapy - They had come so far. If Reg was indeed cheating on her, that would be it. Illness or not, Polly would not share him with anyone else. She was  doing her best to remain calm, to keep the emotion out of her voice.

"What? Glor... Gloria. Oh, God, was I talking about her? Jeezus, I'm sorry." Reg said. Now fully awake and trying to figure out how to explain this strange figure from the world between to his wife. He was certain that she thought he was cheating again on her. But he was not. "Oh, God. How am I going to explain this? I don't even understand it myself."

Chapter 22: One Last Chance

NEWTON, KANSAS - 1931
There she sat, on her old tattered suitcase. She didn't even try to get out of the dust kicked up by the swirling summer winds. They were convinced she had gone mad. The old, sick woman had finally gone over the edge. What she was doing was simply beyond belief, but they could only watch, shaking their heads in disbelief.

Her two youngest daughters Violet - her sixth daughter, and Corabelle - her seventh stood on the platform as the train pulled into the now deserted station. The rest of her 11 children had scattered east and south after the market crash of 1929, combined with the drought, left little opportunities for them to scratch out a living on the 800 acres of family farm land.

Making its one stop for water, the engine released steam, as if enjoying a well deserved pause in it's long westward journey. Slowly the old woman rose, brushed the dust from her blue floral dress, shook free the lace shall around her shoulders, the dust shimmering in the late afternoon sun, and boarded the train.

As she reached the edge of the platform and reached for the train, her grand daughter, Lizzabeth, broke free from her mothers grip back at the station door and came running to her.

"Grammy, Glo! Grammy Glo! Don't leave me!" the little girl hugged her tightly, her tears turning the dust on her pink cheeks into a brown mud as they ran down her face.

Bending carefully, the old woman pulled the child, gently from her. "It's alright, Deary. It's alright." she said, smiling in the way that always made Lizzabeth happy. "I'm going west, dear child, to take one more chance to get better."

Lizzabeth looked into her Grammy's blue eyes, eyes in which she always saw the ocean, and was suddenly not afraid of losing her Grammy anymore. "Go get better, Grammy. Go get better."

With that the little girl turned back to her parents, and the old lady boarded the train. The porter, with the grey sideburns curling out from under his tightly fitting cap, helped her to her seat, punching her ticket, "One way, all the way to California."

She sat, carefully, pulling her shall around her shoulders, "Yes, I am going to the University of Southern California."

"Well, now," the porter said, placing her suitcase under the seat next to her. "Are you sure you're old enough to go to college?"

Smiling back at him she said, "Why thank you, Deary, you are too kind." she settled back into her seat, adjusting the cushion as the train tugged it's way out of the station.

Looking out the window, one last time at the family she left behind, waving to her from their spot on the dusty platform. She knew she would not see them in this world again.

"Damn, crazy old woman." her daughter, Corabelle, Lizzabeth's mother muttered, "What a waste of money. She sold OUR land to go to California for some dingy treatment for her cancer."
Taking care to cover the young girls ears, she turned to her sister, "You know it's not gonna work."

Watching the smoke angle away from the rail line as the train made it's way westward, Violet, the youngest of the old lady's daughters said in reply, "When they send us the telegram that she has died, we will just go get her and bring her home."

After a two day journey, the train slowed to a rest inside Union Station in Los Angeles. The old woman, rose, and once again with the help of the porter, she made her way to the shiny metal platform. The cool of the station energized her after the trip on the stifling train. She stood, looking around, the Doctors said they would send someone to meet her.

Despite her age and her disease, she still had the vision of a hawk, honed after years of life on her Kansas farm, watching the cattle return, and keeping an eye out for the return of the men-folk, always dusty, always hungry and always a bit ornery. So she quickly saw the sign with her name on it, held by a young looking doctor in a crisp suit, and a nurse with a smart white skirt and blue jacket, her nurses cap contrasting with her flowing red hair. "Gloria Prescott" she made her way over to them, greeted each with a hug and the led her to the waiting car.

Chapter 23: A Brave New Treatment - Mortal Oscillatory Resonance 
To his right sat a stack of 14 manilla folders, each containing notes, charts, lab results and signed consent forms. To his left sat a press-pot of Brazilian Arabica coffee, and a bright red mug emblazoned with the gold letters USC on the side, the nurse having just poured exactly 9 ounces into his 10 ounce mug.

Across the table sat 14 patients, men and women, ranging in age from 19 to 90. Gloria Prestcott, 72 sat in the chair with '12' taped to the back. All 14 people had the same strange expression on their faces; exhaustion from travel, exhaustion from previous treatments, exhaustion from the ravishing effects of their various cancers, yet there was - in each of them - a quizzical expression of hope. Hope, for most, all they have to cling to, a last chance to stay alive, even if only for a little bit longer. For Gloria Prescott, her hope was to get 6 more months. July 5th, 1931, the 7th birthday of the 7th daughter, of her 7th child. A good omen, as she always told Lizzabeth, she was her good omen, and Gloria was determined to return home to light the candles on the cake.

Despite his dashing appearance - tailored suit, pressed shirt, thin blue tie, Gloria noted that he slurped his coffee in a most un-refined manner, bringing her back to the present, from thoughts of her grand daughter. The doctor rose, and moved around to the front of the table to the space in front of the seated patients.

"O.K. Well, everything is ready. I hope your respective journeys were uneventful, and that you are prepared to go forward with our experimental trials." Dr. Doyal Raymond Reef, a scientist who was working on the edges of regular science with regard to treating cancer, in fact, his approach was considered 'crazy', 'outlandish' and even 'dangerous' by some more conservative standards.

At the time the predominant treatment involved radical surgery to remove tumorous tissue as well as surrounding healthy tissue to get a safe margin. There were other, experimental treatments that were in use; radiation, chemotherapy and finally, Dr. Reef's technique called, Mortal Oscillatory Resonance, or MOR.

The quiet, well made-up nurse handed out materials to the patients as the doctor described the treatment they were to undergo. The doctor paced rapidly back and forth, swinging his stethoscope like a child and explaining how his technique used sound, matched to the frequency generated by the cancer cells to destroy the cancerous cells, while leaving all other cells undamaged.

Gloria flipped through the pages, gazing at the machine, trying to understand the charts, all the stuff about frequency matching, mega-hertz, multiple treatments, side effects. Being a simple woman in many ways, and very polite, Gloria carefully stacked the papers, and closed the folder, placing it in her lap. Smiling, she continued to listen.

Next the doctor led the fourteen patients to the treatment room, which contained the machine where they would receive their treatment. It was massive. Surrounding the seemingly tiny gurney were a mind boggling array of tubes, monitors, dials, gauges, reflector dishes and wires, all terminating at the bed.

Always a perceptive woman, she could sense that her fellow patients had questions, did not quite understand either, so, she raised her hand, very shyly, like she did back in the prairie school in Mrs. Monroe's one room school house.

"Excuse me, Dr. Reef. How many people have received this...treatment?" silence filled the room. Even Dr. Reef stopped talking, only the massive machine continued to whir, hum, click and beep.

Dr. Reef took a large slurp of coffee, setting it carefully down on the edge of the gurney, "Hmmm. Well, it's like this, you fourteen brave people will be the first."

The doctor looked at each one of them, "You have all signed the release form, the pink paper in your folder. But, I want you to know, it is not too late to back out of this trial, though I hope you don't."

He looked directly at Gloria now, "We have so much to learn from this treatment protocol, so we need all of you."

From behind Gloria a tall, bearded man who looked to be the size of a grizzly bear to Gloria spoke up, "O.K. doc. I'm Number 1, so lets get started, I got a thousand head of cattle coming in from a drive to my ranch in Texas in about two months. I need to be all healed up and ready to do some brandin'."

"Allright, see nurse Hampton and she will get you scheduled." the doctor said, retrieved his mug, slurped from it again, smacked his lips and said. "O.K. then. Good luck and we will see you all soon."

Chapter 24: Trouble on the Table

It took almost two weeks for the doctors to get to Gloria. By then she had become comfortable with the routine. Morning meetings with the medical teams - updates on the patients in the trial. They had lost Marcus, a steelworker from Chicago the third day of the trial. On the seventh day, Gloria had breakfast with Collette, a textile worker from Memphis, and before lunch she too had died. Today, Dr. Reef reported that Tommy, the 19 year old from St. Louis, who had just been accepted to college in Indiana, was very sick and probably would not make it much longer. Their original group of fourteen had now been reduced by cancer to 11, and today it was Gloria's turn for her first treatment.

As she walked down the hallway to the treatment room, she noticed the distinct smell of burning electrical circuits - her husband was a ham radio nut, and the odor filled her kitchen for years. Inside the room, what appeared to be an army of blue-suited technicians were crawling all over the room-sized machine, running new wires, tossing out burned components, one poor technician was at a table with a pile of melted tubes and wires trying to make notes and scribbling mathematical equations.

The doctor led Gloria to a changing room off the main treatment room and she could clearly hear the conversation outside the thin wooden door. "You don't have to change clothes, but you do need to put your belongings in the locker." the nurse said.

"No, no, NO! It is NOT going to work!" said one voice.
"Listen, Stevens. It WILL work. I've been up all night calibrating the audio generator. It's been stable on every test." she recognized this as the voice of 'bespectacled technician'
"I, I, I, don't think so. Look at these numbers. They are not right." it was the voice of the young tech doing all the math behind the pile of melted parts.
The first voice snapped, "Foster, shut-up! What can YOU know, you've only been on this project a couple of weeks."
The voice she now knew of as Foster, mumbled as he passed the changing room door, "If it's not right... and the machine overproduces the wrong frequency... and it goes out of phase... it's gonna be a damn disaster. I'm glad I'm not in charge."

Gloria had carefully closed the locker, opened the door, and put on her cheeriest face as she approached the treatment table. "Well, Deary." she said to the doctor as he walked over to her.
"Is everything o.k.?" Gloria asked.
Dr. Reef could see the concern and shot a look to the technicians that said, 'Could you SHUT the hell UP!' he walked Gloria to the table.
"Now, just lie down here and we will start the treatment." the doctor said, summoning two nurses to help her onto the table.

As she lay down on the table, she reached out for the doctors hand, "It's o.k., Deary. It will work just fine."

The doctor cleared the room, the technicians began the count down, the machine began to whir, parts spun, needles jumped and energy filled the room.

What happened next has not been reported in any journal, or write up in any news paper, but the end result is that Dr. Reef was labled a crack-pot, and his research into this cancer treatment was abandoned.

As the voltage built up to the point to where it was to deliver the proper 'dose' of sound, one of the technicians noticed a bundle of wires begin to glow, and then melt along one of the huge electro magnets that controlled the frequency generated by the machine. There was a flash, and the treatment room seemed to expand like a bubble and then just as quickly retract. The resulting sonic blast knocked out everyone in the room, several people in the hall outside the room and a janitor on the floor above.

When they all regained consciousness the treatment room appeared normal except for two things, the melted wires and the damaged electro magnet...and their patient, Gloria Prescott, 72, suffering from a third battle with advanced metatastic breast cancer, had vanished. While no one actually saw her leave, it was recorded in her chart that she, 'left the study, and the hospital, on her own'.

Back in Newton, Kansas her family waited for word from their grandmother, and a little girl waited for her special friend to return from California to light the candles on her cake. When the family contacted the USC Medical Center, they were only told that she had checked her self out and was last seen at the hospital.

For Gloria, she remembered the pulse of energy, remembered a bright light, then woke, in another hospital room. In another hospital. The parents of a little girl sobbing as the doctor talked about her cancer. The little girl turned her head, with great effort, and smiled at Gloria.
Gloria saw the parents turn toward the bed, and said, "But, look. Doctor! She's smiling! She hasn't smiled in weeks."

Powers Unwanted....

NOTE: When dealing with cancer, finding kindred spirits to talk with - whether or not they have had cancer, is vital. Or at least it has been for me. During my first experience, 20 years ago, I met a few people I could talk with about what I was going through, their presence made my struggle more manageable. This time around, it is no different. Many times those closest to the cancer patient have heard about what they are going through - or have experienced it by virtue of proximity - that it becomes increasingly hard to talk with them -- even when it is necessary. So, those cancer patients who are the 'talkative' type, seek others to which they can share their feelings, concerns, hopes and fears. If it were not for these extended friends, dealing with life threatening illness would be much less bearable.

Chapter 19: A Fortuitous Friendship

To Reg it seemed like hours that had past, sitting there in the lobby, watching people pass by. He was becoming more and more used to seeing the 'colors' that people put off, and was getting better at recognizing the 'sick' from the 'healthy'. He could not yet identify what was wrong - he could not identify which people had cancer and which people had liver complications, or coronary artery disease - but telling the sick from the healthy was getting easier.

The brightest auras - that was the term the hippy chick he dated in college used to use. "What was her name? Starbeam? Moonlitght? No... hmmm. Moonglow! Yes that was it, Moonglow!" Reg sat there watching the people pass by, trying to remember now why he was attracted to her in the first place. Maybe it was the fact that she rarely wore as bra, or underwear for that matter. Or maybe it was that she ONLY liked to make love outside -- even in the winter! "Ah, I miss those days", he said out loud.

"What was that, Deary?" a female voice, right next to him on the couch said. Reg had not realized that anyone had taken the seat next to him. He turned to greet the woman and was surprised to see that as he turned to get a better look at her, she seemed to disappear from his sight - like somehow she wasn't really there - existing only in his peripheral vision.

For a moment, he thought he was hallucinating. "Man, this suit must really be playing with me." he muttered.

"No, no, Deary. You are not imagining things." the voice, comforting now, said.

Reg felt a flush of calm pass over him. He looked - from the corner of his eye - and saw that the woman had laid her and on his leg, in grandmotherly fashion.

The woman seemed to be in her late 70's with stark white hair, and her skin had a golden sheen, like she had been sprinkled with very fine glitter. Again, he turned to get a better look, and again her image faded. "What's going on? Am I seeing things? Who are you?" Reg, whispering now. He looked around the lobby to see if anyone noticed that he seemed to be talking to himself.

The woman continued, "You can call me... Gloria. The more you get used to your new situation, the easier I will be able to see. You are simply not there yet, Deary."

"What do you mean, not ready?" Reg questioned.

The old-lady laughed now, lightly, like a grandmother would when a silly grandchild asked an even sillier question, "You have only begun to see your new path. Your life has been changed. You have new challenges to face, new purposes to discover."

"I still don't understand. What the hell are you saying." Reg was getting more frustrated, both with the inability to face this woman directly and with her cryptic language.

"Now, now, Deary! Such language! Settle down and listen. In fact go on watching the people here, and I will try to explain." she said.

She reached out and grasped his hand in hers, the calm engulfed him again. "Every so often there are people who are born special. They have the power to help people. Over time they have been called healers, shamans, sifu or sensei. Some realize their ability, develop them and have spend a lifetime helping others."

Reg turned a little, her image became a little more clear, still shimmering, she was wearing a pale blue dress with a pattern of white flowers. She also wore a necklace with a shimmering blue stone.

Reg looked around, no one in the lobby seemed to notice anything unusual.

Gloria continued, "Thanks to medical technology, there are people like you who are MADE special, through medical treatment, and become...well, become like us, and we need as many of you as we can find."

If Reg had been confused before, by anything from his initial diagnosis only a few short weeks ago, to dealing with the XACTO suit and it's permanence, he was simply lost now. He was glad he was not standing, or he was certain he would have passed out like he did in doctor Warfel's office. For a moment he thought he was going to be sick.

Gloria sat there, patient, letting him absorb what she had said. She smiled, and Reg felt the calming feeling again, "It's o.k. my Deary, you have been through a lot today. I will speak to you again soon. You need to rest."

Reg felt himself leaning over onto the comfortable leather sofa, and he drifted off into sleep.

Chapter 20: A Day of Discovery


"Reg, Reg... Wake Up!!! God, we were so worried! You disappeared!" Polly was shaking him. He sat up with a start.

"Gloria...Gloria?" Reg was trying to bring himself to wakefulness.

Polly, confused, asked, "Who is Gloria?"

"Oh...uh, nobody. Well, she was a woman I was talking with a while ago. She's gone now." Reg tried to explain, hoping Polly would let it go.

"I'm tired. I want to go back to my room." Polly guided him to his feet, as she held him, he noticed that she appeared to emit the most pleasing shade of green light. As he walked he passed many others who emitted various other colors... blues, reds, yellows, browns, greys. It was tiring. When ever he passed by those who appeared 'darker' he got weaker. Passing the young, particularly children, seemed to give him strength. When they got back to his hall, nearing his room, he noticed a bright yellow light coming from his room... "Lucy's here, isn't she?" he asked Polly as they approached his door.

"How did you know that? It was supposed to be a surprise." Polly asked.

"Never mind. I just knew." Reg said. He shuffled slowly to his bed, climbed in, green and yellow light filling the room as he drifted off.

When he woke, the morning sun was streaming into his room at an angle, bouncing off the beige wall, thermal waves from the window heater making the reflections dance on the wall at the foot of the bed. He found he was starving.

The glow of Polly and Lucy was gone. He didn't know what time it was, all he knew is that he could eat an entire side of beef, were it presented to him.

Nurse Clarice had swept into his room in her silent, nursey way. She was taking his blood pressure, checking his pulse.

"Can I get something to eat? I'm starving!" Reg said, sitting up. Now suddenly awake. "Pink, pink. Pink light, Clarice is pink. I don't know what it means but there it is." 


"I will let them know in the kitchen, honey-chile. Clarice will hustle you up some food, don't you worry 'bout nothin'." she said as she left the room.

Reg was really surprised by his appetite. Sausage, eggs, a pancake, juice and coffee... all gone, in record time. He felt invigorated. Fresh. Better than he had felt in days. "Maybe, it had all been a dream. A nightmare of some kind." Reg pulled open his hospital gown, only to discover, to his dismay, the blue fabric of the XACTO suit was still there.

"Damn it! Shit...!" he said, to no one in particular. Suddenly though, a golden glow appeared to his right, in the chair to his right. He turned suddenly, saw that an elderly lady in a blue dress, with white hair was sitting there. He blinked, and she was gone.

He turned away and the glow appeared again. "Slowly, slowly, Deary! And, I think I already warned you about that language. My stars!"

"Gl...Gloria? You are real? You weren't some kind of dream from yesterday?" Reg said, remembering to look at her only from an angle.

"Well, to YOU and others like us I am very real." she said. As he turned slowly, he saw her reassuring smile again. "I am glad you have eaten. It's time to take a walk. We have to get you working, and soon. There are lives to save."

Gloria appeared now next to his bed, offering her hand, he reached out and stood up, steadying himself at the foot of his bed. He slid his feet into his slippers and headed for the doorway. Gloria was already in the hall.

"Today, you will meet some people that need our help. Hurry, our first patient is very ill." Gloria pointed to a room down the hall that only emitted the faintest of blue light.

Gloria continued, "This is Patricia. She has acute myeloid lymphoma. The doctors have done all they can, she's only 10. She has so much to live for, but her light is fading, the cancer is winning, she needs your help."

Something moved out of the corner of Reg's eye. Something red, with what seemed like long nails reaching out to the little girl in the bed in front of him. She was struggling to breathe, seemed very much in pain.

The fatherly instinct in him found him reaching out to shove it away. He was surprised when he felt an almost burning resistance at his efforts.

With one hand resting on the child, he pushed away at the being to his right, "LEAVE HER ALONE!" He shouted. His right hand burned more, but the being disappeared.

Turning back to the little girl he said, "Patricia, Patricia, it's o.k. It's going to be fine. You will be o.k."
She opened her eyes, smiled and looked at him, she whispered, "Is it gone? Did you make it go away?"

"Yes." Reg said, "I think so." He smiled at her. As he was standing there, holding her little hand, a team of nurses and doctors rushed into the room.

"Sir, sir. What are you doing? Can you step away from the child please?", a nurse was tugging at Reg's arm.

"Yes, yes. I'm sorry. I was walking past her room and she wanted me to come in. I think she thought I might have been her father or something." a lie, Reg knew, but he could hardly explain how he really got there.

The nurse continued, "It's o.k. sir, she's very ill. She has been talking in her sleep a lot the last couple of days. It's the medication."

"All right. I need to go back to my room anyhow. I'm really tired all of a sudden myself." Reg said, he was honestly tired, his right hand and arm ached, he needed to lay down.

Noticing his weakened state, the nurse held him by the arm, "O.K. let's get you back to your room. I will send in your nurse."

Reg walked arm and arm with the young nurse and when the got back to his room and he took a seat on the edge of his bed, he noticed a faint yellow glow in the nurses abdomen, shining through her otherwise green light, "You are pregnant? When is your baby due?"

Startled the nurse dropped her stethoscope, "What? How could you...? You can't know that? I haven't even tested..." she ran from the room.

As Reg layed back onto the bed, he saw the doctor who was attending the little girl pass by outside his room. He couldn't be exactly sure, but he was almost positive he heard him say, 'complete remission' and 'amazing recovery' and 'her disease is gone, I don't understand it.'

The 'glow of Gloria' as Reg decided to call it, appeared to his left this time. "See, I told you. You have a new purpose. You just cured that little girl. Now rest, I know this is exhausting."

The image of Gloria vanished as the pink glow of Nurse Catrice preceded her arrival into the room, "I hear  you had quite an adventure today, chile. I also hear you barely made it back to bed, to. So, Catrice be here with some meds, to let you res' for a while." She produced the ever familiar purple syringe, poked it into the IV tube, and once again, Reg drifted off to sleep.

Self-Imposed Exile...

NOTE: The process of cancer treatment is different for each patient. Depending on the type of cancer, the treatment protocols vary, but usually there is some combination of three attacks on the disease; surgery, radiation therapy or chemotherapy. The best method of attack lies, most of the time, in some combination of the three. As much as the disease and treatments vary, so do the reactions of the patient to his or her situation. Some patients are very open about their experience, realizing their role as 'informer' to those around them. Some patients, quietly endure their struggle in silence, beyond their immediate family, few around them know about their illness. Some patients, not wanting to face the reality of their situation, go into denial. They reluctantly endure treatment, convinced that treatment is a waste of time and energy. Most people who are diagnosed with cancer find themselves some where along this spectrum. Each person doing their best to work their way through this experience.

Chapter 17: Unwilling Bearer of Bad News

Polly sat behind the desk, silently trying to catch her breath and digest all the information that was layed out in front of her.
"Oh, my God. What am I going to tell Reg?" she thought to her self. She pushed a few charts around on the desk, trying to give the doctor the idea that she understood what was going on.
She nodded and looked at him, still silent, trying to grasp one of the thousand questions flying around in her mind, "What does this mean? For Reg? Will he be O.k.? I mean is this XACTO thing going to make him better?"
She paused, shaking her head, trying to remember what he had said, "You mentioned side-effects? What kind of side-effects?"

Dr. Emil George, stood now, affecting his professorial air, twirling both sides of his moustache. "Well, my dear. From what little evidence we have from past experimental treatments we know this."
He moved around to sit next to the wife of his patient.
"The combination of radiation and the chemotherapy used has created a bond that will make your husband very sensitive to his environment. This sensitivity will very for him, as with all our past patients. His DNA has bonded with the suit, so predicting exactly what will happen is not very easy."

Polly sat, listening, absentmindedly flipping through more charts and micro-photographs. "So, what I THINK you are telling me, is that you really don't KNOW what will happen to him, right?"

Busily twisting the right side of his 'stache, Dr. George paused, and said, "Well, no. Not exactly."

"Great!" was all Polly could muster, she sank lower in the chair, arms crossed trying to comfort herself like she did when she was little, trying to find that quiet place inside that would allow her to think.

Dr. George continued, "What we DO know is that patients have reported anything from hyper sensitivity to sunlight or sound. Some patients developed heightened senses of smell, hearing, touch or vision."

"Well," Polly snorted, "that pretty much covers everything."

"Yes, but what I haven't told you, is that whenever there is a positive side effect there is a complementary negative one." he was back in the mode of the professor once again, pacing, twirling the stache waving his arms.

"Our lab analysis of other patients seem to point to something to with the body's natural desire to achieve balance. Some how the way the skin has bound to the suit, requires that the electrolytes in the body remain neutral." the doctor explained. He waited for the woman to respond.

She sat there, silent. He waited.

"So, in a nut-shell," Polly stood now, pacing, trying still to pull it all together, "my husband has a life threatening cancer - two cancers. And, while being treated to remove one and cure the other, you used an experimental treatment that has some how gone wrong."

Dr. Emil George tried to interrupt, but Polly was determined and was rapidly pulling herself together, processing the information.

"This material, this 'suit' - the XACTO thing is permanently bonded to his body, leaving him.... Leaving him... What exactly? Disabled? Cured? In, what is the term, in 'remission'?" She paused for the doctor to comment.

The doctor, not standing this time, seemed humbled a bit. Not fiddling with his moustache, he folded his hands in front of him on the desk.

"No. Well, yes. Well, it all depends." he stammered.

"What the HELL, are you talking about?" Polly yelled now.

Continuing the doctor explained, "The effects of the XACTO fabric and the combination of chemo and radiation WILL effectively keep the cancer at bay, at least that is what our resarch shows, but your husband will have to return for re-immersion treatments at least twice a week for the medicine to keep working."

Looking the doctor right in the eye, like her gunslinger great-grandfather might have, "For how LONG? How many treatments will he need?"

For a second time, Dr. Emil George, noted oncologist, looked baffled, "Well, Mrs. Ularguy, we really don't know, but our guess is...forever."

"What am I going to tell my husband?" Polly asked, arms folded again.

Walking around the desk, the doctor offered, "I will be glad to come with you to discuss this with your husband..." Polly cut him off...

"No, thank you. I think you and your team have done enough already." she turned, left the room and walked down to her husband's room.

Chapter 18: Just Get To The Point

As she got closer to her husband's room, she could hear the monitors beeping. Steady, rhythmic beeping, indicating that her Reg was sleeping, or at least resting -- good, it would give her a few moments to figure out how to break all the news to her husband. News that she herself didn't really understand.

Polly sat at her husbands bedside, took note of the bandaged areas of his arms, his neck, his chest. She also noted the way the blue suit seemed to shimmer and move with his breathing, indeed it looked just like his skin, albeit with a shimmering hexagonal pattern throughout. She reached out, took his hand and waited.

She must have drifted off, she didn't know for how long, but woke when she felt her husband squeezing her hand.
"P-P-Pols? Are...you...awake?" Reg said, in a weak voice, barely above a whisper.

Polly stared awake, nearly dropping the pile of notes and papers that Dr. George had given her, "Yes, yes. I am here, hon. Can I get you anything?"

"Maybe just...some water." Reg, was trying to wake up, trying to clear his mind, he kept rubbing his eyes, but for some reason every thing around him looked a light shade of purple, People though, appeared to have been dyed various shades of pastel colors, nothing major, like in a comic book, but just enough to be 'off' from normal. He kept blinking, trying to get his eyes to work right, but nothing he did helped.

Polly turned to the beside table, where a pitcher of ice water sat, condensation dripping down the side, forming a small puddle on the table. She poured the water into a styrofoam cup and held it with one and as she pushed the button to raise her husbands bed with the other.

"Here you go, hon. Small sips, o.k.?" she held the cup to his lips, and noticed him blinking, seemingly trying to focus, or clear his vision. "Is there something wrong with your eyes?"

Looking at his wife, Reg tried to explain, "I...I...don't know, everything looks funny... Strange colors. I can't seem to get my eyes to be clear."

"Hmmm..." Polly, sat quietly, trying to restack the papers on her lap, moving them to the bedside table, next to the water.

"What? Does 'Hmmm' mean, Pols?" Reg asked trying to turn towards her, noting for the first time, all the places on his body that were bandaged. Fully awake now, he next examined the XACTO suit. His skin itched, everywhere. He tried to get under it but quickly discovered, to his growing confusion, that he could not. "Polly? What the HELL? What is this stuff? I can't seem to get under it? My skin is itching so bad it feels like ants crawling all over me!"

Having been prepared for some of this, Polly knew when to call the nurse, she reached for the call button and pressed it - somewhere outside the room she heard a panel start to beep. She turned back towards her husband.

Nurse Catrice swept in, "My, my, my chil' you's awake now! Scratchin' like a ol' hound dog! Let me give you somthin' to hep you out." She produced a syringe containing puple liquid, poked it into his IV line, and Reg felt a sudden rush of cool spread through his body, like he had been suddenly plunged in to a cool summer stream.

As the medicine took effect, Polly took a breath. Trying to figure out how to tell her husband all he was facing, not sure that she could.

Still trying, confusedly at the edges of the XACTO fabric, Reg couldn't understand what was going on. "Jesus, this stupid fabric is stuck to me, I see weird colors, my wife seems to be concerned. GOD someone tell me SOMETHING!" he thought to himself.

Polly grabbed his hands, trying to calm him. She began, "Reg, I don't know how else to tell you, there is just so much the doctor tried to explain to me while you were recovering."

"Where should I start?" she said, searching for a good point at which to tell her husband what had happened. "The surgery, that's a good point." she said, more for herself than for Reg. "Your surgery went well, they got all the colon cancer - and none of your other organs are affected - which is good, but they had to treat the other, spreading cancer, with this blue fabric."

Looking at Polly, waiting for more, Reg had relaxed a bit, leaned back into his bed, "I remember him talking about that fabric. It helps deliver my chemotherapy."

"Yes. And. Well. There's more." Polly was still searching for a way to tell him the rest.

"What do you mean, more" Reg said, running his hands over his blue suit, still itching a bit, but not as bad, Reg listened as his wife explained his situation.

"... well Reg, that's about it. The suit that is keeping you alive, is permanent. You will also have to return to the hospital every month to be re-treated in the biomemetic gel tank. You will also experience 'other symptoms' that are unique to your body, and how the DNA has bonded to your system." Polly stopped, reached for he water, her mouth dry from all the explaining.

Reg sat silently, blinking, much has Polly had in Dr. Georges' consultation room, trying to absorb everything he had just heard. He was stuck. Literally. Alive, but stuck none the less. This stupid blue suit, his messed up vision. The incessant itching,  "God, what ELSE can happen?" he thought to himself.

Suddenly, Reg sat up, swung his legs over the side of the bed and announced. "Help me up, Polly. I gotta get out of this room for a while. I gotta think."

He tried standing, knees wobbly, Polly had to catch him as he steadied himself at his bedside. "Just let me be, Polly. I gotta figure this out for myself." Reg pushed past her heading unsteadily for his door and wandered out into the hallway, and down the corridor.

Once in the hallway, Reg moved slowly along the wall, making his way past the other patient rooms. When he passed he noticed that each patient he saw had their own unique color, some brighter, some more dim, some practically non-existent. From the pieces of conversations he heard in passing from doctors, nurses, and family members he quickly put together the meaning of what he saw. When he did, he simply didn't know how to handle it, so he kept walking.

When he finally stopped walking, he realized he was in a waiting room near the hospitals entrance. He sat there, watching people walking by - each one a shade and intensity of color unique to them. He was finding himself able to guess which ones were the 'patients' and which ones were the 'family'. The sick and the healthy. He had finally given in to the fact that for some reason, this was how he saw things now. How he would always see them. He would know. He could see. Apparently this was the gift and the curse of his new condition. He HOPED that this was where it ended.

He would discover, that he was wrong. There would be much more.

Nothing Is The Same Anymore...

NOTE: One of the many things that change when a 'person' becomes a 'patient', and eventually a 'patient' becomes a 'survivor' is that life is seldom viewed from the same perspective as before. From diagnosis, through treatment and on to remission, our lives are changed. Depending on the situation - type of cancer, age of patient, general health of the patient, type of treatment, etc. - simply SURVIVING the treatment phase can be a major life accomplishment. For most cancer patients once they get past the point in time of diagnosis, their life becomes consumed with medical appointments, possible surgery, hospital and home recovery, varying dosages of radiation and/or chemotherapy, all with the HOPE of beating back the disease and arriving at the other end alive for as long as possible.
The challenge along the way - for the patient and the family / friends around them - is to keep things in-tact through this time. As much as the person WITH cancer has to deal with life threatening physical issues, those around them must deal with the responsibilities of day to day living.
Treating someone for cancer means almost always a loss of income, as all treatment process eats up not only time, but also the energy for the patient just to get from one day to the next. Even in the best of circumstances - in families with two wage-earners, or those with great insurance or lots of savings, costs rise, funds dwindle and this often leads to frayed relations within families.
It is often easy for the patient to forget that the emotional burden of keeping things together is as tough for the patients family, as the treatments can be on the patient. How BOTH parties deal with things can make a big difference in how strong - physically and emotionally - they will be at the end.

Chapter 15: The Extraction

Reg woke up after another anesthetic induced sleep to find that someone had kindly placed the flat-screen TV in a position where he could see it, rather than leave him - as he had ben for three days - staring at the ceiling, his view only interrupted by nurses and doctors, and family members who hovered over the tank where he lay, healing, adapting to the new treatment. He wasn't quite sure how he felt about being a human guinea pig, but he had no choice, really. What had been done to him was done while he was unconscious, he had no control, no say. He had to simply adjust to the reality that presented itself to him.

"God, damnit. How much longer will I be in this stupid goop?", he said to himself, as he lay there, listening to the noises of the hospital floor come to life for the morning. Phones ringing, machines beeping, carts with food being wheeled around, people flitting in and out with papers, orders, medicines, all geared towards making people better, or simply keeping them alive.

Sometime between the re-hydrated scrambled eggs, and the awful cafeteria coffee that he was being fed by an attractive young nurse, Dr. Emil Goerge appeared over his bed, cleanly shaven, the handle-bars of his moustache freshly waxed, "Good morning, Reg! Are you ready to get out of this stuff today? Your tests show that you may be ready."

"Ready to get out? Is this guy nuts! Why do doctors always ask such stupid questions?", Reg thought to him self. What he said was, "What do you think? I feel like a chicken breast that has been marinating in someones kitchen. God I want to shower and shave!"

"One step at a time. One step at a time. First we have to prep you for the return to a normal environment, and check the performance of the XACTO suit." Dr. George motioned to the door way and several technicians flowed silently into the room, taking up various positions around the tank, working switches, tapping on keyboards.

"The process of extraction will proceed as follows," he stood and, as Reg has noted before, moved into his lecture mode of explanation, playing to the audience of six people in the room.
"First, we will give you some extra medication to help you deal with any pain that you may feel. Then we will raise the temperature of the tank a bit to allow the bimemetic gel to soften, and for you to be released."

The doctor waved and pointed to technicians, "Nurse Beckman, administer the ansethetic. Begin the warming and draining process."

Reg was kind of disappointed that his head had barely cleared from the meds that let him sleep in comfort overnight had worn off, before he felt another wave of cooling numbness flow through his body as he was extracted from the goop. Drifting, floating, trying to stay focused, Reg found himself moved from the confines of the tank to a gurney next to the tank.

Looking at Dr. George, the meds seemed to make his moustache seem bigger, wilder and as he spoke he seemed to be speaking in a time-warp, "Hoooow, arrrrrre, youuuuuu. Feeeeeling?"

Forcing his eyes to focus on the rather silly image before him, Reg attempted to answer, "I....something....woozy....feel....smurfy skin, blue?"

The lights overhead flashed by as he was wheeled from his room to another, where he was again lifted to  another bed where nurses ran warm water over his body, removing the gel from his blue XACTO suit. After the bath, it was another trip down another hallway to another room where he was moved again to another bed and this time covered with a blanket.

Pink Cloud Chocolate Nurse appeared over his bed, "Ooooo look at you chile. In yo' fancy blue suit. You be lookin' like Spiderman or somethin'. Doctor wanted me to give you a little something to hep you relax, get used to bein' back with us, regular folk." Catrice, produced a vial of yellow liquid and poked it into the IV. "There, there sweetie, you res' now."

A warm darkness, this time, enveloped Reg and he slept again.

Chapter 16: A Return Marked By Pain

It wasn't medication, or light, or sound, or one of the many odd, often overwhelming aromas that filled the hospital, that woke Reg from his drug-induced sleep. It was the sudden inability to breathe. Startled by the sensation, Reg tried to inhale. Over and over he struggled to catch even a single breath.
"What the HELL! I...CAN'T BREATHE!" he tried to shout, but what his ears heard him say was, "Unnnnnnngh..."

What his wife noticed, as she sat holding her husbands blue gloved hand, was that his eyes flew open, wildly looking about the room. She also noticed him struggling to breathe.
"Honey, honey, stay still! Don't try to move too much. Focus on your breathing."

Nurse Catrice noticed his struggled attempts to draw a breath and quickly fixed the oxygen tube to his nostrils. Polly looked up from Reg's face to thank the nurse, and again she had vanished like a cloud.
"It's O.K.! It's all right! I'm here. Lucy is here too."

As the pure oxygen filled Reg's lungs, his vision and mind cleared. He moved his head, which felt like it weighed 50 pounds, and saw Polly's beutiful face, and right next to her, their sandy haired daughter, smiling down at hime. "How....how....long....asleep?" Reg stammered.

Polly held his hand now with both of hers and explained, "Well, honey, you spent three days in the tank, then a day in and out while they cleaned you up, and then they kept you asleep for another 4 days. So that makes almost a week you have spent in one bed or another."

Reg nodded and looked at Lucy, she seemed upset, "Daddy, my concert was last Thursday. You MISSED it... but Mommy was there."

"I'm....so....sorry, sweetie....I....really....wanted...to...be...there." Reg, exhausted, even with the oxygen, tried to apologize.

Lucy answered quietly, "It's O.K. Daddy. Mommy made a video, you can watch it later at home. When are you coming home? Me and Mommy and Baxter miss you sooo much. Daddy, Baxter sleeps in your chair, all the time." Baxter was the full grown Greyhound they had adopted from a race track, and while Reg liked the dog, he was convinced it was the dumbest beast ever. He insisted on attempting to fit his 170 pound, six foot long body in Reg's leather recliner, his legs, tail and head flopping over the edges when he slept.

Into the room swept Dr. George, with two nurses and a med student, who was maddly tapping on his PDA trying to keep pace with what Dr. George was saying.
"Good, good, good you are awake." he said as he rounded the foot of the bed, stopped to check some monitors, and to fondle the greenish fluid in an IV bag. Looking satisfied with everything, he turned to Reg and Polly.
"Today we will remove your suit, check your progress and start the next phase of your treatment."

After spending a week on his back Reg found he had absolutely no strength to even sit up on his own. So, with the help of the nurse and Polly they worked him up to a sitting position. A nurse stepped in with blue cloth covered cart of instruments placing it on the bed next to Reg.

Dr. George moved in now, donning purple surgical gloves and flippng back the cover from the tray, he picked up a pair of large tweezers and a flat spatula instrument of some kind. "I will now begin removing the XACTO suit. Your new skin should have grown under it after we finished your first course of chemotherapy that it delivered to your system while you were in the biomemetic gel."

Polly had to leave to take Lucy to oboe lessons once Reg was sitting and the medical team had come in. They both gave him a peck on the cheek and were off, it was a good thing, because she might not have been able to handle what came next. The Doctor attempted to lift the edge of the cuff of the blue fabric near Reg's right wrist. When he did, Reg yelled out, "Owwwww. Holly shit that hurts!"

The Doctor tried to continue, ignoring Reg's outburst, "Now, now, it is probably just residue from the gel that has sealed the edge of the fabric. The Doctor now reached for a scalpel on the tray to his right. He proceed to make an incision along the boundary between Regs wrist and the fabric.

This time Reg reacted even more forcefully. "Damnit. What the HELL are you doing?" Reg yanked his arm away, with great effort, and fell back wards onto the bed, blood seeping from  under his hand. "What the hell is going on?"

For the first time, Reg saw true confusion pass over the face of the doctor. "I, I, don't know. This has never happened before. The XACTO fabric has always released after treatment." shaking his head, Dr. George summoned a nurse to bedside, "Here, here, nurse, please take care of this injury."

As the nurse quickly stitched up the wound, Dr. George sat, obviously pondering this new development, not something he had expected. Clearly he was trying to come up with a plan to figure out what was happening.

Returning Reg to his seated position, the doctor approached his equally confused patient. "Reg, I don't know what is happening, but in order to figure it out I will need to attempt to free the suit from other areas of your body."

"What? What do you mean 'free the suit' exactly?" Reg said, holding his bandaged wrist gingerly.

The doctor continued, all note of confidence gone from his voice, "Well, to put it simply I will have to try to cut it free....Like I did at your wrist. We must get samples to see what is really going on."

The next hour seemed like an eternity, to Reg. Tired of all the anesthesia, tired of being misled about his condition, he refused anesthetics and the doctor and nurses tried, unsuccessfully to remove the suit. His screams were heard up and down the floor. Inciting all kinds of concerned looks and hushed voices from the other patients, and staff going about their business.

Towards the end, they had no choice but to sedate the blue-suited patient as he struggled on the bed. Once unconscious they bandaged the eight or ten incision points, and whisked the samples off to the lab to try to figure out what was going on.

A few hours later, Polly returned to find her now multiply bandaged, sedated husband back in his bed. She stormed out of the room, demanding to see Dr. George. Demanding to know what had happened while she was gone.

"Mrs. Ularguy. Please come with me." the doctor led her to a consultation room just down the hall from her husbands room, she noticed she had a thick file and some x-rays under his other arm.

Once in the room, the doctor proceeded to slide x-rays on the wall mounted light boxes. He arranged micro-photographs and printed test results neatly on the table in between himself and the puzzled Polly. He proceeded with a detailed explanation, which quickly went beyond Polly's ability to understand the specifics, what she got from the doctor was this.

"The XACTO fabric suit has bonded with your husbands newly grown skin, in a permanent fashion. We don't understand all the specifics yet, but it seems to have to do with the natural silk in the fabric weave, the radiation needed to activate the suit and the regenerative compounds in the biomemetic gel in which your husband was immersed." Dr. George explained, point in here at charts, tapping on photographs.

The doctor continued. Polly took a couple breaths and tried to follow along, "Your husband was the first subject to receive an entire suit of the fabric. We have used it successfully on other patients, but only in limited coverage situations, and rarely had any problems with the release of the fabric."

Polly put up her hand to stop the doctor from going on, her head was swimming again. "So, what you are telling me is that the fabric suit used to treat my husband's cancer is no permanently attached to his body." She waited for the doctors response.

"Yes. And there may be other.... hmm, side effects that we do not understand yet.... according to other reports." the doctor tried to add with as much sympathy as he could.