Nerve Damage Read Online Free PDF

“It’s a big long word—I never did learn to say it properly. Bobby’d get a little impatient about that.”
    So Roy wasn’t totally unprepared for the biopsy results, could even be said to have taken it well: he could read that on the faces of Dr. Honey and his staff.
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    â€œYou’ve got someone to do the driving?” said one of the nurses on Roy’s way out.
    â€œWaiting in the car,” Roy said.
    He drove himself back up north, alone. Clear blue sky with silver overtones, small golden sun, glaring but somehow cold, snow that grew whiter and whiter the farther north he got: a lovely winter day, and winter was Roy’s favorite season. He especially liked when ice sheets coated the granite outcrops where the road builders had blasted through, and there was lots of that today, those hard rocks shining bright. It brought tears to his eyes, and Roy, no crier but here in complete private he couldn’t come up with a good reason not to, let them flow. Not for long,though—one exit, maybe two. By the time he’d crossed the Connecticut River and entered Vermont, he’d pulled himself together.
    Diagnosis: sarcomatous unresectable malignant pleural mesothelioma, stage three in the Brigham staging system.
    How many stages?
    Four.
    So it could be worse.
    True.
    Good. So where do we go from here?
    From here?
    In terms of treatment.
    Ah.
    Sarcomatous unresectable malignant pleural mesothelioma: there turned out to be a lot of meaning crammed into that little phrase. The word unresectable alone packed a tremendous punch.
    Treatment: palliative care.
    Palliative?
    It means—
    I know what it means. Is that all you’ve got?
    There are clinical trials, but you don’t qualify.
    Why not?
    The diagnosis.
    Isn’t that a little circular?
    Dr. Honey had seen some justice in that remark. Then he mentioned that his wife knew all about Roy’s work, was amazed at her husband’s ignorance. After that he brought up an experimental program a friend of his was about to start at Hopkins.
    Can you get me into it?
    I’ll try.
    Try hard?
    Prognosis: four months to a year.
    Roy went cold all over when he heard that. And Dr. Honey seemed to shrink in size, as though Roy was suddenly seeing him from a distance, already going or gone.
    How certain are you?
    Nothing is certain in this profession, not certain in the absolute sense.
    So it could be thirteen months?
    It could.
    Fourteen?
    Possibly.
    Eighteen?
    Nothing is certain.
    That means there’s hope.
    Always.
    I had a hat trick the other night.
    Hat trick?
    An unfamiliar term to Dr. Honey. Roy, wishing he hadn’t said it, didn’t explain. Hat trick sounded pretty frivolous next to a word like unresectable .
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    Roy drove up to the barn. A kid in a sweatshirt and unlaced boots was shoveling the path. Roy did his own shoveling. He got out of the car and said, “Hey.”
    The kid swung around. “Hi, Mr. Valois. Figured you must be, you know, delayed, so I thought I’d just, um…”
    Skippy. Was this his tryout day? Roy had forgotten all about it. What had he told him? Show up at two? Roy checked his watch—three-thirty—then noticed a new path shoveled all the way across the yard to the shed, and another, completely unnecessary, that seemed to be following the entire perimeter of the barn.
    â€œI really don’t need…” Roy began. Skippy waited, a full load of snow poised on the blade. “Come on inside,” Roy said.
    Skippy flung the snow up and over the high bank and they went inside.
    â€œSo cool,” said Skippy, his gaze right away on Delia.
    â€œIn what way?” Roy said.
    â€œIn what way?” said Skippy. “It’s awesome, Mr. Valois, all those rads. Got something in mind for the next one?”
    Next one. That coldness came over Roy, but not as intense this time. “How about coffee?” he said.
    â€œI’m good,” said