168: How to Write about Life When Everyday Is a Reminder of Death?

Singing off the top! 

Andrea Askowitz  0:00  
I'm Andrea Askowitz.

Allison Langer  0:16  
I'm Alison Langer and this is Writing Class Radio. You'll hear true personal stories and learn how to write your own stories. Together, we produce this podcast, which is equal parts heart and art. By heart we mean the truth and a story, by art we mean the craft of writing, no matter what's going on in our lives, Writing Class is where we tell the truth. It's where we work out our shit. 

Andrea Askowitz  0:41  
Shit.

Allison Langer  0:40  
 There's no place in the world like Writing Class and we want to bring you in. Today on our show, we bring you a story by Dr. Colleen Arnold. Colleen Arnold is a physician and freelance writer in Lexington, Virginia. She has written for Insider, Wall Street Journal, Chicken Soup for the Soul and a few others. She is a mom to three adult daughters and grandma to a precious two year old. When she's not with patients or family. She's probably hiking with her dog, doing yoga or camping in her minivan. You can find her on Facebook, and on her website. Links to both will be in our show notes. The essay we're bringing you today is an amazing example of hot topic, cold prose and also how to bring the reader in by writing in the present tense. It's super powerful. It's so well written and amazing. You guys do not want to miss this story. So stay tuned. We'll be back with Colleen Arnold after the break.

We're back. This is Andrea Askowitz and you're listening to Writing Class Radio. Up next is Dr. Colleen Arnold reading her story: "Just Another Day"

Colleen Arnold  2:06  
I enter the tiny exam room where only a month ago, my patient Dick first mentioned a new cough. Now the oxygen cord hangs from his nose and snakes down to the huge tank on the floor beside him. He wears his pink shorts and flowery polo shirt, even though he won’t be going to the golf course today.
 He carries a book under his arm, just in case I am behind schedule, and his usually tanned skin hangs from his gaunt face with a deathly pallor. He pushes himself up from the chair and gets short of breath from the exertion. I reach for him as his balance wobbles, and he pulls me into a long, tight hug.
 “I don’t have much energy these days,” he says. “Good thing I’ve gotten so forgetful; now I can read the books in my library all over again.” I laugh at his joke, as always. His wife laughs, too, like it’s the first time she’s ever heard this clever comment. They’ve been married for 57 years, and as she twirls the wedding ring on her finger, I sit down between them and begin the conversation I dread. 
 Within a few days of developing his cough, Dick went from hiking two miles a day on the golf course to barely being able to walk his dog around the block. We were convinced it was a simple case of bronchitis until an X-ray showed his lungs were filled with fluid, and a faint mass was hiding in the lining of his lungs. By then, he was so short of breath that he was admitted to the hospital, where the fluid was drained and the mass biopsied. We know now that he has stage 4 mesothelioma. It is a deadly cancer that worsens quickly and comes from asbestos exposure, like in the naval yard where Dick served as an officer many years ago.
 “Dick, you know this isn’t a curable cancer, right? The chemo might help improve your breathing, but it might make the rest of you feel even worse.”
 “I know, Doc,” he says gently. “I’ll let you know when I’m done.”
 We talk about goals and expectations, about getting enough sleep and trying to drink plenty of water. I remind him that he may feel hungry for something specific one minute, only to be nauseated by the thought of it the next.  I explain that his appetite is going to get worse and that nutrition shakes might help him keep up his energy, but that at some point, food just feeds the cancer. 
 I tell him I’ll call in a week to check on him.  I squeeze his wife’s hand as I stand to leave. The tears begin to gather in the corners of her eyes, and I depart quickly so that she won’t see mine.
 I hurry to my office down the hall, close the door, and lean against it as the tears escape. The advice I give Dick and his wife is based not only on my professional experience but my personal experience, too. Thoughts and memories pop into my head with vivid clarity.  Doctors are supposed to be detached and objective, but I’ve been in Dick’s wife’s chair, and I remember every detail, each hopeful conversation and subsequent piece of bad news: “Neil, this chemo regimen didn’t work, but there are others we can try.”
 I remember my own husband’s bad jokes, told when he barely had the breath to share them. As they wheeled him away to have his brain lesion removed, he said, “I need this like I need a hole in the head,” I remember how one day we were laughing at life, and the next day we were crying at death.
  “Neil, I can’t do this without you.”  
  “Well, you don’t get to choose.” My eyes are closed as I stand alone in the silent office. It’s been eight years since my husband died, and with yet another pending loss, grief resurrected itself long after I believed it was gone. Done. Finished. Dealt with. But there is no such thing as ‘finished’ with grief. Unwelcomed questions pop into my head: should I have pushed different chemotherapy, fought for a spot in yet another drug trial, or prayed harder for a miraculous cure? I’m a doctor, and I couldn’t even save my own husband. 
 And then I hear the voice of Aaron Burr in Hamilton singing, “Death doesn’t discriminate…it takes, and it takes, and we keep living anyway.” 
 None of us are spared death or the experience of losing someone we love. We all grieve. And my version of “living anyway” is not defined by cures and positive outcomes but by the hands I hold, the stories I listen to, and the tears I help wipe away. In a few short weeks, Dick’s wife will need me even more than he does. 
 So, I sniffle a few last times and grab a tissue from my desk. I blow my nose, dry my red eyes, and pack my grief back into the little place in my heart where it resides. It is not resolved; there is no rewarding remedy, but the next patient is waiting in another exam room, so I open my office door and head back down the hall.
 
 
 

Allison Langer  8:04  
That's so beautiful. I her writing is, okay I don't know if we've talked about this in a long time, but hot topic cold prose. I feel like this is really a great example of that we get emotion, but what she's doing is she's giving us the facts. Just cold hard facts, boom, boom, boom and then we take a step out, she goes into her office shuts the door and she really gets into it, then she goes back out into the real world and has to just deal with life. So yeah, super powerful. 

Andrea Askowitz  8:43  
Yeah, I didn't think of it in terms of hot topic, cold pros, but I see what you mean, because it's so it's sparse. It's not like she doesn't overstate. She just says it like it is.

Allison Langer  8:58  
But sometimes the essays are woven with like a personal story and then the situation at hand, but this one, I felt like we get the entire situation before we really know that the same she was in the same situation. We just were getting like the point of view of a doctor, which is cool, super cool, but then we realize, oh, there's a real personal side and that just that whole part about grief you know, which of course resonated for me a lot that grief resurrects itself long after we believe it's gone. Yeah, I found that personally, over and over and over again. It just doesn't go, but how is she dealing with it? And she shows us.

Andrea Askowitz  9:42  
I love what you just said about how the story took a turn and it was kind of surprising and I don't know we I think we talked a lot about sort of setting up like planting seeds at the beginning but I'm really glad that she didn't because we were just there with her and I felt her emotion. I felt her emotional connection to Dick and his wife. 

Allison Langer  10:06  
Yeah, same 

Andrea Askowitz  10:07  
Anyway. Yeah. Like they were, he hugged her. 

Allison Langer  10:10  
I know.

Andrea Askowitz  10:10  
 It was so beautiful. Like that detail made me love her love him love them. I got them a sense of who they were to each other. I don't know that I've ever hugged a doctor, you know what I mean, so they were really close. And then yeah, and then it's kind of a surprise that she had to deal with the same thing. My favorite part is what she's come to tell us and that is this part at this, the second to last paragraph she says, "My version of living anyway, is not defined by cures and positive outcomes, but by the hands I hold, the stories I listened to and the tears I helped wipe away. In a few short weeks Dick's wife will need me even more than he does." 

Allison Langer  10:55  
It's amazing and you know what, 100%, but we get it and we feel it so intensely, because in the beginning, she shows us that she does that. So that's why we believe her and we feel it.

Andrea Askowitz  11:08  
And then the very last line is really like that step into the sunset kind of device. I don't mean it to sound like it's a device, but she opened I opened my office door and head back down the hall. She shows us that she's about to go do her work.

Allison Langer  11:24  
Yeah, I love her.

Andrea Askowitz  11:28  
Another thing I noticed that I thought was so effective is the use of the present tense. Yeah, right from the very beginning that I entered the tiny exam room. We're only a month ago, my patient Dick first mentioned a new cough. When it's the present tense, it's so immediate, like we're there with her in this moment. Like, everything that happens happens to her in real time, it seems and so we're experiencing it in real time. It's not always easy to do, because our brains kind of go back like we're used to, I entered the room, but she has this way of just being super front and center with her emotions and and with the details of the story, all of them. 

Allison Langer  12:09  
Yeah, I mean, I'm especially drawn to the doctor process, the whole like how a person deals with this every day. And the pain of it is, is harsh and it's never resolved grief, there's no rewarding remedy. I mean, it's it's really it needs to be said over and over again. Because I think people who haven't gone through it really do not understand and I think she does such a great job of explaining without splainin you know, she shows us.

Andrea Askowitz  12:42  
I think the reason that we on Writing Class Radio are we as writers want to read stories like this, well, for me, it's just so that not not necessarily for the people who haven't been through it, but for the people who have like to understand just to feel connected to this woman in this way, the way that you do the way that you totally get it.

Allison Langer  13:03  
And to be able to write their own stories there's so many people out there that this writing about it and really diving into to the emotions, the feelings and everything really is helpful. Obviously it doesn't resolve it, but it does help a little bit.

Andrea Askowitz  13:17  
Right for her, the line I learned something the "food just feeds the cancer". I was like fuck.

Allison Langer  13:24  
I was thinking that too. I know what was she talking about? Like the sugar because I had heard that about cancer but food?

Andrea Askowitz  13:32  
guess at some point, though kind stage for medicinetheliazone? 

Allison Langer  13:37  
Mesothelioma. 

Andrea Askowitz  13:38  
Sounds bad and maybe that that's be that particular kind or maybe all? I don't know, but I never heard that and I didn't know that and it's just like, wow, god dammit, this guy was doomed.

Allison Langer  13:53  
Just heartbreaking. Yeah. 

Andrea Askowitz  13:56  
And then she does so seamlessly like I've seen this not only professionally but personally and I've been in Dick's wife's chair. I love this doctor. 

Allison Langer  14:08  
Me too. So much so much. 

Andrea Askowitz  14:11  
Yeah, I mean, I'm so moved by it and I've read it a bunch of times and ah, so excellent. Excellent story.

So well, thank you guys for listening and thank you Colleen Arnold, for sharing your story with us. Writing Class Radio is hosted by me Alison Langer and me Andrea Askowitz. Audio production by Matt Cundill, Evan Surminksy, Chloe Emond-Lane and Aidan Glassey at the Sound Off Media Company. Theme music is by Justina Shandler. 

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Tara Sands (Voiceover)  16:25  
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