Editor Note: The author is a father who lost his only daughter to aggressive melanoma. His story defines the key tactics that can improve survival odds and the compassionate support that the community of cancer researchers offers to determined families.
~
I got the call on a Thursday. August 2009. My daughter wasn't waking up.
I sat in a windowless office in a nondescript building east of Los Angeles. I was on a consulting assignment with a small high tech company.
Hunched and absorbed over spreadsheets of data and estimates; I lost myself in controllable, predictable, safe numbers.
My phone vibrated on the desk and Linda's face lit up the small screen. Forty-two years of marriage and I still loved seeing my blue-eyed, freckled-faced, red-haired wife
I stepped around the desk and closed the office door.
"What's up?"
"She's not waking up,” Linda said. “You need to come back. Like tonight.”
"How are you doing?" I asked, as if I didn't know from the tone of her voice, strained, wrung out.
"Worry about me later. Just get home."
"I’m on my way."
Our only daughter Molly had end-stage metastatic melanoma, the pit bull of cancer. She was thirty-nine years old.
Eighteen months earlier, Molly lived carefree and happy. She was married, mother of two, lived in a suburb of Seattle and her biggest worries: ice skating events for her daughter and how to get her son to eat more green vegetables.
I stuck my cell phone into my pocket, stuffed my laptop and file folders into my battered briefcase and resisted the urge to recap projects with my client or update my schedule with his secretary. I went straight to the parking lot and climbed in my old Mercedes.
I wanted to go straight to LAX, leave my car at the curb with the engine running, get on a plane and fly to my Molly's side. But first I had to book a flight on my cell phone, navigate the LA freeway traffic, figure out what to do with my car, secure the house and get a ride to the airport.
I gripped the steering wheel, strained my forearms and cursed the universe. Just thirty-six hours earlier I stood in Molly's house in Edmonds, Washington. I asked the hospice nurse, a short Croatian woman with soot colored hair, "How long?" and she said "weeks."
How foolish to think that I had any power over the cancer clock. Molly didn’t have weeks. She had days, maybe hours. My decision to come home to LA and my business for two days was a mistake. No presentation or contract was more important than being with Molly.
~
The sky glowed orange when the engines dropped in pitch and the pilot dipped the nose towards SeaTac. The landing gear growled as I checked my watch—8:55 pm.
I was as wrung out and as strained as Linda sounded, when she called earlier. The effort to cut through LA traffic, store my car, get a ride to the airport and catch this flight itself known by the twist in my shoulders and the ache in my muscles. I didn't care. I twiched to get off that flight and to my daughter's side.
Once the door opened, I sprang from the plane like a convict on the run, found my way to a kiosk advertising shuttles to downtown hotels. No good; I needed to go to a house in Edmonds, north of downtown Seattle.
A skinny clerk behind a desk typed on a keyboard.
"Can I get a ride to Edmonds? Right away?"
He looked up, hands poised over the keyboard, "You want a limo?"
"If that's the fastest way to Edmonds.
He glanced back at his screen, decided that his data entry could wait and picked up a phone. He talked to someone in a low tone then hung up.
"Parking slot 5," he said, pointing to an outside curb area.
Exhaust, cigarette smoke and oily fumes filled the parking garage. A black Lincoln rested in slot 5. I wondered what would happen if I got in and drove off. I turned to go back to the kiosk and shake things up when a middle-aged man in wrinkled slacks and a white shirt came out of an unmarked door, put out his cigarette and hustled to the Lincoln. He sized me up and raised his eyebrows. "You the Edmonds?"
I moved to the Lincoln. "Right."
In seconds, on our way to Molly's house thirty miles away, I called Linda.
"I’m leaving the airport."
“She's stable."
"Has she said anything?"
There was a short pause on the line.
"This morning we adjusted her position in the bed. I whispered into her ear that we had to move her and that we didn’t want to hurt her. Molly didn't open her eyes, but she said, 'I'm okay.'"
"I'm moving as fast as I can," I said.
Linda did not respond.
"Maybe she's waiting for you to get here," she finally said.
"Let's hope so." I put my phone away and leaned forward in the seat.
"I'm in a hurry—no objection to enthusiastic driving."
The driver nodded and adjusted his mirrors. We weaved in and out of carpool lanes checking for state troopers, until we passed the Kingston Ferry exit and turned toward Edmonds.
I prayed, "Hang on Molly."
Five cars filled Molly's driveway so the driver pulled up at the curb. I gave him a twenty dollar tip, grabbed my bag and hopped out of the car before he could open my door. I jogged across the lawn to the house.
Chapter One
1997 Northern California
I woke up with a spike pounding into my skull. I rolled out of bed and stood up, eyes still closed. My stomach roiled. I leaned on a wall for support, found the small bathroom in the motel room and made a noisy mess in the toilet. Every move hurt. I grabbed a towel, doused it with cold water and held it on my head. I rinsed out my mouth, took three Excedrin and moved zombie-like back to the bed and sat. I squeezed the sides of my head trying to rub out the pain. No good.
The vomiting roused Linda faster than a wake up call. She checked the time—7:15 am.
"What did you do in San Jose this week?" She assumed I went out drinking with my sales reps before meeting her at the hotel.
It hurt to talk. I shook my head and mumbled the truth. "Nothing. The usual. No big dinners." I resented her inference.
"You should have come sooner. We need to help her. Are you going to be okay?"
I ignored the scolding and answered her question. "I don't know. Hurts to talk. "
I covered my eyes with the towel to keep out the morning light that snuck around the drapes.
"Did you take anything?" she asked as she put on her robe.
"Excedrin. I need some ice."
"I will bring you a bucket of ice but I have to meet the others for breakfast."
By "others" she meant the vanguard of wedding guests who were arriving Friday for the Saturday wedding of our daughter Molly. By early afternoon, the wedding party and parents would be joining us at the Tiburon hotel on the north side of San Francisco Bay.
I heard Linda come back in the room with the ice but didn't open my eyes. She wrapped some cubes in a towel and put it on my forehead.
"Here. I hope this helps. What do I tell Molly? This is ridiculous. You have to walk her down the aisle tomorrow. Are you going to be okay?"
"I'll be okay. Tell her I'll be there."
"What about the dinner tonight?"
"I don't know."
"That's just great," she said to the closet and finished getting dressed to have breakfast with the guests.
My medical records would describe a fifty-four year old male in good health with average blood stats. Drawings of minor fractures showed the consequences of skiing badly. In the Life Style section a note indicated moderate alcohol consumption and a history of smoking until age forty. During recent visits I complained about aspirin-resistant headaches and my physician wrote "probably stress related" in my records. More than one weekend was spent bedridden with an ice bag on my head.
The wedding headache achieved a record level of pain, something like broken bone pain, pain worthy of a scream except screaming would make it worse. But for the coincidence of the wedding I would have feared a brain tumor.
For twenty-seven years I supported and protected my little girl, Molly. What began with affection grew into parental love and immense pride. We raised her around alcohol; wine with dinner, weekends where gin and tonic flowed. Yet she cared little for alcohol. We sent her to the University of California at Santa Cruz, located in the marijuana capital of California, yet she steered clear of the weed. Linda and I smoked cigarettes until Molly was a teenager and, yet, they never appealed to her. She had filtered out the good stuff from the family DNA.
When she graduated from UC Santa Cruz in 1992, we agreed to support her pursuit of a graduate degree. More course work was necessary, a series of internships and a dissertation to earn a doctorate. I told her "You can be the first Pence to put a 'doctor' in front of your name."
Now this lovely healthy woman, a near replica of my wife with her red hair, blue eyes and fine figure was leaving my little tribe. In the deep part of my brain, the primal core, a fight was going on. On the surface of my brain, where we process rationally the rules of modern society, where we plan ceremonies to celebrate giving our daughters to other men, all was in order, but down deep the rebellion raged. A new man would be her protector and provider and the one she turned to for advice. I cringed with pain and rolled back and forth in the motel bed.
My wife Linda is a mother bear, the kind of woman who could lift a car off a child and say, "It just needed to be done." I was the third most important person in her life, but then again, I might have placed her third as well. Our common passion for our children; our need to be close to them kept us together. When we argued I imagined an alternate life with a different woman. But the collateral thought of living without my children under my roof was strong motivation to make the marriage work. Counseling, therapy, self awareness and twelve step meetings became our shared experience and by 1997 we were solid.
Linda came back to the room after breakfast and found me in bed with my ice pressed on my right eye socket. I tried different ways to lay or hold my head or squeeze the icy towel. I thrashed the covers into a puzzle of sheet and blanket. I tried to shower but didn't get past the toilet. Dry heaves on an empty stomach magnified the headache, like hitting a bruise. My primal brain sensed a possible victory as my rational self began to think "I can't do this wedding."
Linda delivered a report from the breakfast meeting, "Glen is going to drive to the airport and pick up Bill and Maria." Was I being exed out of the wedding already?
I was supposed to pick my son and his fiancée at the San Francisco airport. We shared first and last names, William Pence. To differentiate between us we called him Billy way past the time when his friends shifted to "Bill." Billy stood over six feet tall, one inch shorter than me, but much better built. Water skiing and weight lifting had molded the bulk of his two hundred pounds into his chest and arms. My weight sagged around my beltline. His fiancée, an energetic woman lawyer named Maria, had dominant eyes and a broad quick smile. Linda said she was "a force in the family."
Glen, the bridegroom and future son-in-law, was a Campbell which meant every conversation in which he was mentioned for the first time had to include the modifier, "Not THE Glen Campbell, but he does play the guitar."
I acknowledged the change in plans with a mumbled "Okay."
I heard a knock on the door. Linda said, "That's Karl, he wants to help you."
"Karl was the senior minister of the Neighborhood Church. He and his wife Barbara were our best friends in Palos Verdes, the coastal community in Southern California where we had lived for over twenty years.
Linda opened the door and Karl walked to the bed with a concerned look on his face.
"How are you doing?"
"Lousy" I said. Karl was born to Swedish parents and looked like an aging Viking, stout and pale with sharp blue eyes.
"I wanted to thank you for putting Barbara and me up in the whirlpool suite," he said, "but we forgot to cover up the hot tub last night and when we woke up this morning water was dripping from all the walls. It reminded us of Florida."
"Sorry."
Karl turned to Linda and repeated the offer of help.
She said "I'm going to call a doctor. Maybe the motel knows someone."
I wanted them to stop trying to engage me and just bring in a doctor with a shot of anesthesia or morphine. They both left before I thought to ask for fresh ice.
I tried to lie on my back and relax, to apply techniques of self-hypnosis. I counted back from ten, visualizing my consciousness leaving my body. It didn't work and I resumed a fetal position, squeezing my head, shutting my eyes and not thinking clearly.
I remembered the nights I arrived home late to a dark quiet house. I always checked on my children first. When I stole into Molly's room her bedside lamp shone on her face, on her curly red hair splayed on the pillow. She slept on her back, her small mouth open with nighttime breathing, her covers neatly pulled up to her chest. In the adjacent bedroom my son, Billy, was tangled in his sheets, face down, straight red hair falling every which way, one foot off the bed. I ached with love for my two freckle-faced children—now grown adults.
I heard the door open and knew that Linda was back. Her voice told me her tender side had returned.
"How are you doing?"
"Still the worst ever," I said without opening my eyes.
"I brought some fresh ice and I called a doctor. If you miss the rehearsal dinner Molly will understand." Then she outlined her backup plan for the wedding; my son would take my part and I agreed, helpless to object.
I surrendered to the headache, powerless to participate or plan. The architects of the event, Molly and Linda, had things in hand. They labored over the details for months: a custom gown of velvet, satin and seed pearls, a bouquet of Lilies of the Valley, our minister from Palos Verdes to preside, a bagpiper in honor of the groom's Scottish heritage, and a twelve piece band. They selected St. Hilary's in Tiburon, a hundred year old gothic chapel in a wild flower conservatory, for the service. Linda and Molly had all they needed to conclude the ceremony, to surrender our girl to the Campbell clan. For Linda the prospect of grandchildren, the second round of babies was intoxicating. For Linda, a rebirth. For me, at least in my ancient brain, it was a loss of my princess.
The headache broke up clear lines of thought but I dug up images for the toasts and conversations that might still happen if Linda found a doctor.
I recalled seeing my wife-to-be for the first time at a dance in 1964. She was the prettiest girl in the room. I was a junior at Caltech and I still remember the "oh my God she said 'yes'" thrill when I asked her out the first time. We were married and pregnant before we had money. Linda worked all day in an insurance office, Billy went to day care and I went to grad school and worked at Caltech. Between her job and my fellowship we paid the rent and little else. For fun we took Billy to the free arboretum to watch peacocks and ducks. On Saturday afternoons I would push Billy in his stroller to the corner market for Fritos and bean dip. Good memories, but best saved for a toast at Billy's wedding, not Molly's.
By the late sixties I had a company car, expense account and commissions that paid for a comfortable house, a ski boat and a few luxuries. Linda decided the time was right for a second child and in 1970 she got her wished-for baby girl. Molly was easy to raise. She was only four weeks old when we bundled the kids in the back of our Ford station wagon and went to a drive-in movie. The baby slept quietly in the back seat while Linda, Billy and I sat in the front eating popcorn. A good image for story telling I thought, the calm baby in the back seat grown up and now in a wedding gown.
Even in grade school she spoke conversationally to family like a grown woman, asking them about their lives, their children and remembering details of their lives. It seemed inevitable that she would make a superb counselor or analyst once she earned her PhD in psychology. I liked those images of Molly discoursing with her elders and decided to work one into a toast.
In the middle of the afternoon a young doctor in a sport coat came to our room. He had the cheerful attitude of a real estate agent bringing papers to close a deal. He examined me and concluded "It's not a brain tumor."
He gave me an injection of Toradol, a drug used for emergency treatment of severe migraines and a second injection for nausea. Linda told him Molly's wedding plan depending on my participation. He relished the role of heroic healer and assured Linda, "If he's not better, just call me."
The Toradol did not work immediately, but the pain lifted enough to allow remorse about missing the rehearsal dinner. There would be good food, wine, laughter, toasts, stories of Molly and Glen as children. It was my kind of event, and I had images of Molly that I wanted to share with our friends. Linda returned from the dinner with a bowl of soup for me and we talked. She described the thoughtful toast my son presented. I told her I had a good feeling about my headache clearing and she left to be with Molly while I ate my soup alone and finally went to sleep.
By early morning the animal in my skull had retreated to a cave but was still growling so Linda called the doctor back. The second shot of Toradol put the creature to sleep and left me well rested and clear headed. Linda called Molly and said "Dad's okay; he's getting dressed. "
I said, "Tell her it's a good thing I skipped dinner last night, my tux is a little snug."
The Tiburon winter air carried moisture from the bay and a fertile scent from the fields. By the time of the service the sun had burned off enough fog to allow a glimpse of the bay but fog still shrouded the Golden Gate Bridge. Four bridesmaids, dressed in blue, gathered and giggled beside the dormant wildflower beds.
Molly arrived at the church in a car driven by her maid of honor. I opened the car door for her and bowed. She smiled as folds of satin poured out of the car followed by the prettiest girl in town. She asked how I felt and I said "Fantastic. How about you?"
"Nervous."
I took Molly on my arm up the stairs of St. Hilary's as the sun broke through the fog. We waited in the foyer for a couple of minutes for the ceremony to begin. I whispered that she looked beautiful and saw the joy in her moist eyes. The music began and we strolled, side by side, toward Karl, dressed in his finest robe. Molly gave tiny waves and smiles to friends and relatives as we passed the pews. Young Glen Campbell, dressed in a formal kilt with a silver dagger in his boot smiled like a man who finally had a princess of his own.
Bio: William Pence lives with his wife in Portland, Oregon and works as a management consultant for high tech companies.