(Cont.) I then took a deep breath and realized my best next step was to call one of my closest friends, Ravi Balasubrahmanyan—who just happens to be . . . a physician of the highest rank of intelligence and experience. Back in December when I’d described to Ravi my reasons for a recent (unsatisfactory) visit to urgent care (extreme fatigue; nosebleeds; inability to shake a cold (after Covid was ruled out by a negative PCR test)), he suggested that bloodwork should be in order.
Two days before Christmas, I returned to my clinic, where bloodwork was done and the attending physician said, “I don’t know a lot about multiple myeloma, but I’m thinking that’s what we’re looking at here.” He proceeded to establish an appointment with an oncologist at the earliest possible date—January 3. I’ll never forget that little “Christmas present” and “New Year’s party favor.”
Starting that first week of January after I was definitively diagnosed with multiple myeloma, Ravi took it upon himself to study the disease and its treatment protocols. Thereafter until I’d completed the first phase of my remedial care, he called me every single night—after his long, hard workdays as a family physician—to check on how I was doing and answer my questions about my meds and appointments. He knew everything about everything and was thoroughly reaffirming of what I’d been told (or what I’d forgotten or misapprehended) by my superb oncologist. Ravi likewise followed my transplant procedure and recovery.
I’d actually spoken recently to Ravi about my post-transplant vulnerability to viral, fungal, and bacterial infections. Living and practicing in the “real world,” he was far less of a killjoy than was my BMT doc, Dr. O. [for “Officially”] Killjoy. Ravi had also explained more of the science—using terminology a college history major could comprehend.
But now in the Northwoods far from the University of Minnesota Cancer Clinic and surrounded by a forest of microbes living far outside any laboratory petri dish, the theoretical had become frighteningly real. I needed to talk to a person of medical science who also lived in the “real world” of flawed human beings who step on pointed, microbe-rich sticks. I needed to talk to Ravi.
He answered on the first ring, and once I’d described my mishap and after a million questions had been asked and answered, Ravi responded with the cool reassurance of a combat corpsman. “Remember,” he said, “your neutrophil count is back to normal; you’re feeling great still, right? [We’d talked just a couple of days before.] You’re not run down, you’re not having any other problems, right?” I affirmed. “Then what I’d do is wash the finger thoroughly, keep it clean and keep an eye on it. But forget the hydrogen peroxide. That’s only going to irritate the healthy skin around the wound.”
Relief swept over me. Worst case scenario, I figured, I wasn’t going to lose an arm or even my hand; I could even save the lower half of my affected finger. I might not be able to play a Paganini Caprice on the violin, but then again, having hacked away on the fiddle for over 63 years—with all my digits intact—had I learned a single Paganini Caprice? Answer: NO. And was I likely, even without impairment of a finger? Again: NO.
The nick, as it were, took overnight to heal sufficiently to convince me that in fact, I wasn’t going to lose any part of my finger.
As I reflect on the entire “scare,” I now see that perhaps Dr. Killjoy is to Dr. Ravi what a law professor is to a practicing lawyer; id est, the law prof, knowing the finer points of the black letter law, says authoritatively, “Here’s the issue, here’s the law, and now that you know, you should pass the exam”; the practicing lawyer, knowing “how the real world works”—including the law as it often gets misapplied—says pragmatically, “Now that you’ve gotten yourself into trouble, here’s what we’re gonna do to get you out of your jam.”
Once you’re in the woods—actually and figuratively—it’s amazing how fast your objective changes from “passing an exam” to “getting out of a jam.”
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© 2022 by Eric Nilsson
