A week later, I wasn't feeling so optimistic. I had come down with a cold that had turned into a raging ear and sinus infection, and I was trying to gut it out and push through the last week of school before finals. I had been feeling so much better without the side effects of the alemtuzumab that I had almost managed to put out of my mind how sick I really was. But feeling better or not, I wasn't healing. I was, slowly, inevitably, getting worse.
Dr. Robeson had hammered the seriousness of this kind of illness into me the first time I'd seen her. Opportunistic infections were a leading cause of death for victims of leukemia, she'd said-it was my white blood cells that were broken, so even as they multiplied out of control, they stopped doing their job of fighting invasions, large and small. If an infection didn't kill me, then I could look forward to hemorrhage, catastrophic gastric ulceration, or drowning in my own fluids with pulmonary edema.
Good times.
I called Dr. Robeson as soon as I recognized the signs of another infection. She prescribed me a round of ciprofloxacin over the phone. The infection could be viral, she explained, but waiting for a culture could lower the chances of the antibiotics being effective if was bacterial, given my compromised immune system. It was my third infection since I had been diagnosed with leukemia-and the second time I'd heard that spiel.
"Have you called to hospice?" she asked. "You don't have to choose that path, but I do wish you'd at least talk to them."
"No," I said. "And I'm not going to. I called the other number that you gave me. The card."
There was silence on the other end of the phone for a moment. "And how did that go?"
"It went well," I said. "I think. I passed the screening. I'm supposed to call in two days and give my consent for the procedure." I had tried again to look up anything I could online, but the name Thorne and a phone number weren't enough to give me any relevant hits. "Can you tell me about this company? Its name? The CEO's background?"
"I'm afraid I really can't," Dr. Robeson said. "But I trust Mr. Thorne implicitly."
"The treatment is risky," I said. "It probably won't work."
"I know," said Dr. Robeson.
"But if it's the only chance I have...." I let that trail off.
"Cora, there's nothing more I or any other oncologist can do. Mr. Thorne's procedure, however unorthodox, is your only possibility of a cure." Her voice wasn't unkind, but she was firm.