Editor Note: Easter Weed is an excerpt from a forthcoming book about the author's futile struggle to save his daughter from cancer. The author, William Pence, is a Portland business executive who learned that three and only three tactics are useful when serious cancer is the problem.
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Easter Weed
Cherry trees line the streets of Edmonds. They bloom for three weeks in spring, their bare winter trunks topped with clouds of pink and white blossoms. After their three weeks of glory the blossoms drop to the street as if choreographed. I drove though the carpet of colored petals to Molly's house sending up a wake of color thinking "she would like to see this."
I parked, went in the side door and saw my wife, Linda, still in her bathrobe but busy with the dishwasher. Strands of her hair hung by her cheeks, unintentional consequences of a hasty pinup. She looked up at me and said, "Glen had a meeting; left early. I have to get the kids up. Can you do this?"
"Sure. You okay?"
She turned and walked away, slippers slapping the floor.
I went to work unloading the dishwasher and set out breakfast bowls and silverware. My four-year-old grandson Max bounded into the kitchen wearing a tee shirt with a chimpanzee on the front. He gave me a quick "Hi, Boppa," and began to sort his collection of small metal cars. He chose three and began to maneuver the toy cars around his place mat making zoom noises. I asked Max if I could play and he told me to "get my own cars." I chose three from his toy box, and added them to the place mat race course. Max looked at my choices and wanted my Ferrari. He offered me his Porsche. The negotiation complete, he outlined a complex set of contradictory rules that insured him victory.
We laughed about a rematch until his eight-year-old sister Remy took her seat. In a funk and looking for trouble, she settled on her young brother.
"Max, you can't have that many cars at the table."
Max responded with a matter-of-fact explanation that he only had three cars.
"Boppa has three too."
Remy rolled her eyes. Remy, flexible as a brick, knew right from wrong. Linda triaged a dozen outfits with Remy each morning before the princess made an appearance. With Max, pajamas were fine.
I brewed latte's with Glen's complicated Espresso machine while Linda served cereal, toast and juice to the children. The room smelled of coffee and warm toast. Linda and I sat with the children and spoke of school homework and after school plans. The children still believed their mother was getting better and as soon as the chemo was complete would resume her role at breakfast.
The gregarious little boy loved the influx of family and friends filling in for his mother but Remy stewed at the breach of order. Molly was supposed to be at the head of the table. Molly was supposed to be there, tending to her daughter's needs. Remy masked her anger at the cancer but her morning eyes betrayed her pain.
A neighbor picked up the children for school and the house fell quiet. Linda went up to help Molly get dressed. I finished my latte and scanned articles in the Seattle Times.
Molly made her way down the stairs holding the railing and walked with small steps toward the table. I pulled out her customary chair as she smiled and said "Hi, dad."
"Hi, kid," I said as I hugged her and kissed her neck. It was cool, moist and salty. Her red hair hung in short wisps. Fragile shoulder bones jabbed through the loose warm up jacket.
"How you doing today?"
"I'm okay," she said flatly as she surveyed the detritus from breakfast on table: half empty cereal bowls, juice glasses and toast crumbs.
"Max didn't eat much," Molly said. Her morning sinus congestion muffled the words.
"That's his second bowl," said Linda as she set up the blender on the counter.
Molly asked me, "Have you had breakfast?"
"I had some cereal with Max. What's on your menu this morning?"
Linda plugged in the blender and answered. "I'm making her a breakfast shake and a boiled egg. You could help—with the dishes." She nodded toward the table.
"Got it," I said and cleared the children's dishes.
Getting calories into Molly was a daily challenge. Her latest chemo cocktail of Taxol, Cisplatin and Avastin, caused nausea and numbed taste buds. The radiation caused sores in her mouth. All the curative options had failed and Dr. Kaplan proposed strong, toxic chemotherapy to slow the progression. Molly risked the discomfort, hair loss and potential loss of hearing for the extra days or weeks with her family. Kaplan told us "Do whatever you can to get calories in her."
Cartons of Ensure, egg white protein and malted milk lined the backsplash. The refrigerator held yogurt, butter, cheese, ice cream and whole milk. Bananas and avocados crowded the coffee maker. Five books on cancer diets rested on a bookshelf alongside well thumbed children's books.
Linda chopped up the egg, added a tablespoon of butter and placed it by Molly along with a piece of toast smeared with peanut butter and a tall shake.
"Thanks, Mom, maybe later," Molly said, nudging the bowl aside.
The Campbell house was a life boat where Molly stayed afloat, waiting and getting weaker. We sent up the flares, rationed our resources but rescue was out of sight. In a literal lifeboat, survivors talk of rescue plans. After the normal protocol for metastatic melanoma failed we talked of cures in the pipeline. People get rescued from extraordinary events, cured of terrible disease. Why not Molly? Even as it became harder to find any stories of people who were cured by other methods, I kept looking. I could not stop.
The butter melted on the soft boiled egg in a blue bowl. Molly pushed the uneaten calories aside and opened her calendar book. She concentrated on writing an entry, trying to hold form but her hand quavered and the note looked like something written while riding on a bus.
"Do you want to try a little marijuana?" I asked.
Molly looked up at me from the calendar and laughed. Not a belly laugh, but a laugh nevertheless. It made me smile. Linda was cleaning the sink and overheard us.
"What are you two talking about," she said, keen to hear my follow up.
"Maybe what they say about marijuana and appetite is true."
"How do we do it?" from Molly, my non-smoking little girl who rarely drank alcohol or ate fat or sugar.
"He probably has some friends I don't know about" my wife offered while giving me a look that said "and you better not."
Linda and I had first-hand knowledge of marijuana, but the Zig-Zags and the baggies of weed were a brief episode in our past. I learned about medical marijuana at a Saturday seminar at the Redondo Wellness center, not from a secret life. I explained that smoking pot or using tintures, inhalers or even edibles were all effective for some cancer survivors.
Thinking and talking about pot added spice to the next two days in the lifeboat. We agreed to talk to Dr. Kaplan before experimenting.
* *
It takes forty minutes to get to Kaplan's office in Swedish Hospital in downtown Seattle. The lanes, damp from the spring rain, reflected the pale sun. We were driving on a wide mirror flanked with deep green fir trees.
Molly asked me, "Are you working on a new thing for me?"
"Absolutely," I said.
I gave her a short version of what I had learned the previous week, putting an optimistic spin on what was a long shot. I could have been pitching lottery tickets. I found a connection between Molly's rare mutation and the efficacy of a drug called sorafenib. The odds of the drug actually curing her were slight. Maybe even zero. We just needed time.
"I need to talk to another researcher--a fellow at the University of Pennsylvania named "Flaherty." He published a paper last year that relates to your cancer."
"Are you going to talk to Kaplan about it?" she asked.
"As soon as I have a little more support. For now let's just spring the marijuana on him."
We parked in the Swedish Hospital parking tower and I carried Molly's bag as she held my arm into the elevator.
The receptionist recognized Molly and said, "Just have a seat, we'll tell them you're here." Five minutes later we followed a nurse back to Dr. Kaplan's examination room. The pictures and magazines had not changed. Dr. Kaplan arrived clad in his usual tweed and sneakers and went directly to Molly with only a nod at me.
He peered over his reading glasses at Molly and rocked on his running shoes with his hands behind his back. He knew that the Cisplatin had rendered her nearly deaf in one ear so he leaned in to ask "How are you doing?" Optimism had turned to sympathy over fourteen months. There were no more multi-week treatment plans, just "How are you today." He asked where she hurt and how much. He asked about sleeping and eating. He had her chart. He could see the weight loss and understood the trend. Normally, he would have concluded the meeting after confirming her next infusion date.
We said, "One more thing."
Like a child asking for an unsupervised overnight, I said "We've been thinking about marijuana...just to see if it helped her appetite." Then another pause while we waited for him to say something like "That stuff can be dangerous."
But he said, "Do you have the marijuana already?"
We explained our plan to take his authorization to a Green Cross dispensary in Seattle.
"Why don't you just get some upstairs at the pharmacy?" he said.
"Uh...what?," I said as images of doobies in white boxes crossed my mind.
Dr. Kaplan unraveled the confusion. "The key ingredient in marijuana is 'THC' and we have prescribed it for years as an anti-nausea treatment as well as an appetite stimulator. I can give you a script for the pills."
We returned home with a brown bottle of Marinol pills and a giddy optimism. A favorite topic of conversation among prisoners of war is home cooking. It's the same for cancer survivors. Molly yearned to feel an appetite, to savor a bite, to digest a meal without nausea.
On Easter Sunday Molly wrapped herself in a quilt and sat in an Adirondack chair to watch her children hunt down the eggs that Glen had hidden. Linda laid our two Marinol tablets with Molly's morning shake. While Linda prepared a ham dinner with sweet potatoes and salad the THC worked its way into Molly's blood stream.
For a few hours there was no talk of cancer or chemo. Max ate like small wolf and begged to be excused from the table. Remy ate with regal grace and pace. Linda filled Molly's plate and we all watched without comment as the ham, potatoes and salad disappeared. Each bite said "she has more time."
During the dinner clean up I was doing usual work with the dishwasher when Linda came close to me.
"Nice job with the dope," she said in a low voice.
"Nothing like a home cooked meal."