KEY POINTS:
It began with abdominal soreness, a nagging sensation that criss-crossed the border between discomfort and pain.
It was the sort of pain you can just about live with, the sort that follows you around like a dog but obligingly keeps its distance when there's work to be done and the mind is occupied. But concentration and stoicism can only do so much. They can't make it go away.
It became easier to pinpoint, localising just under the ribs on the right side and extending through to the back. It lent itself to metaphor: sometimes it burned; sometimes it made her feel as if she'd been punched in the midriff by someone who knew how to throw a punch.
My wife isn't one to dwell in anxious ignorance when there's a vast medical library and archive of human suffering within a few clicks of the mouse. She went to our GP convinced she was suffering from a stomach ulcer. He thought it was worth a second opinion.
And so Susan proceeded to the first of many rendezvous with costly machines and their poker-faced operators. The gastroscopy found no ulcer - a small victory in the medical profession's campaign against the impertinence of self-diagnosis - and nothing else untoward.
But next day unease turned to dread. The ultrasound scan detected marks on her liver. Doctors tend to call them masses or lesions. We know them as tumours.
There are several types of liver lesions. There are hemangiomas which are quite common and benign. These weren't hemangiomas. There are focal nodule hyperplasia (FNH) which are benign. These weren't FNHs. That left adenomas, which are also benign, and the other one, the thing everybody's heard of. The medics often refer to them as malignancies, malign being the opposite of benign.
A single adenoma on the liver isn't that unusual. Multiple adenomas are very, very rare and, as the ultrasound operator said, "There's a lot going on down there." As of Monday, May 12, the doctors began working on the premise that the lesions on my wife's liver were the other thing. To be precise, they assumed that the imaging showed metastatic malignancies, raiding parties dispatched from a primary predator that lurked elsewhere. So they scoped her
here and scanned her there and bombarded her with radioactive material and came up empty-handed.
Meanwhile, her liver function remained normal, her blood tests were negative, which is positive, and on a measure of wellness in which zero is perfect health and 10 means decomposition will commence shortly, she rated down there with the yoga gurus and berry-eaters.
The doctors frowned and shrugged and pronounced it mysterious. One medical man who obviously believes that bedside manners are for sissies and priests was quick to assure us that all this encouraging data didn't cut the mustard with him. Another seemed rather pleased that, whatever form of cancer it might turn out to be, it wouldn't be run-of-the-mill.
After about a month, they stopped playing hide-and-seek and conducted a biopsy. The tissue contained no malignant cells. Unlike Groucho Marx, who didn't want to belong to any club that would have him, Susan had no say in the matter: her body had put her up for membership of the exclusive club of those afflicted with multiple benign hepatic adenomas. Last week she had a chunk of her liver removed in Auckland City Hospital and is now back home
recuperating. That makes it sound brisk and routine but the combination of pain, residual anaesthetic, drug-induced nausea, infection and a gummed-up digestive system caused a hellish few days. The only visible after-effects are a shuffling gait, strange food cravings - tinned asparagus, lemonade ice blocks - and some discreet wounds.
Get up close to any profession or industry and you won't like everything you see. The health system is no exception. There can be few lonelier places than a surgical ward at 3am when you press the help button and no one comes. Sometimes the wheels seem to turn with agonising slowness.
Then you remember that, while your life has been turned upside down, this is their normality. Overall, you come away grateful for their dedication and cool professionalism and humbled by their capacity to stay afloat in the sea of decay and trauma that rolls in daily.
They do the technical stuff. Everything else you need to get you through - love, compassion, support - comes from family and friends and sometimes strangers. I hope you're as blessed in that regard as we are.
