THE EXPERTS

Dr Jaggonath provided the intellect, grace and a mischievous sense of humor. He had natural affinity for people and a sparkling compassionate nature. His treatment plans were individual. He said while longevity is getting better, the average life span is still 3-5 years. He told to just listen. He insisted I stop taking notes and he took all the notes for me actually writing upside down while he talked so I could inspect his drawings and graphs. Quite the one-man show. He said the treatment has come a long way since the 60’s. Back then in a clinical trial, ½ the patients were given a heavy-duty chemo and the other half Coca Cola (I couldn’t tell if he was kidding.). He said those given the soda lived a bit longer. The chemotherapy was more deadly than the disease. This was all pretty serious. I felt fine, but now I needed chemo so I could live 3-5 years. What is this? I was so confused and frankly so pissed off.
Treatment for me, he said would be a single or a tandem stem cell transplant after the chemo knocked out the cancer. How do you actually transplant cells, I wondered. He said that there were drugs just getting their approval like Revlimed, a cousin of Thalidomide. The researchers isolated the molecules that caused the side effects in Thalidomide like peripheral neuropathy, insatiable hunger, and drowsiness and got rid of them. Then they made this new drug that just killed the mm cell. While this all scared me out of my mind, I felt like here there were more options.
Lewis came with me. He calmly read the newspaper while we waited to see Dr Jaggonath. We were here to learn about options not try to determine my expiration date.. He asked questions when we went in for the consultation and he attempted to translate some of my terror-addled long-winded questions into specific answerable questions. Afterwards he didn’t seem stricken by the consultation. He calmly asked me where I’d like to go or what I’d like to do. Short of walking a few blocks west and seeing if I could run across the Westside Highway without getting hit, and if I survived, jump in the Hudson River just to test my meddle, I couldn’t think of a thing. Then I remembered a new Trader Joe’s opened just a few blocks away-the first in Manhattan and there were a few things there like Panda Black licorice that would make me happy.
While I would have loved to stay with Dr Jagganoth, neither he nor his hospital were covered by my insurance and the costs would be daunting- He told me that he would accept my insurance, write letters advocating for me. I told him that I didn’t think I had the strength to add a major insurance battle to this fight against invisible kooties. I told him my plan covered treatment at Memorial Sloane Kettering. He referred to a colleague of his at who practiced at Sloan, Doctor Comenzo.