Berkeley 1983

You recall that back in Berkeley Meg and I were living in a flat on the second floor of a classic brown-shingle on Hillegass avenue just off of Telegraph. It was the spring of 1983 and Meg and I were to be married in late May. We went on long runs together op the fire trail in the hills which were sweet with the smell of eucalyptus. On weekend mornings we would walk to the corner bakery on College Avenue to get fresh hot rolls and strong coffee, and sit and chat with friends. The wedding invitations went out. Meg sent one back to us. When our invitation to our own wedding arrived, I tore it trying to get it out of the envelop. Why I couldn’t say. Why had I been so careless? Meg cried when she saw the torn invitation. She accused me of no longer wanting to marry her.

I admitted to myself that something was wrong, Meg and I discussed what was going on, the signs, the symptoms:: always tired, less fun and short tempered, muscle wasting. One morning while shaving, I starred in the mirror at a vein on my neck that pulsed ominously. Had this vein always looked this way but I had never noticed? My stamina had decreased and my running deteriorated until it became impossible. On my twenty-sixth birthday I just lay on the couch holding my abdomen which was swollen and extended. My old friend and beer buddy Rob (You didn’t know him; he was in Anthropology) came to visit and take me out to a bar. When he saw me lying on the couch he laughed at my beer belly. The thought of drinking made me nauseas.

I had visited the doctor complaining of fatigue. I had gotten on a scale where Meg was working and discovered that I had put on fifteen pouds in a week. It was hard for me to button my pants, to bend over and tie my shoes. Nevertheless he was not overly concerned. Perhaps I had been eating a lot. At my insistence he ordered some blood tests.

As they say, no news is good news. But on Friday the thirteenth the doctor called back with news: the blood tests had shown some abnormalities. He suggested that I come in and see him on Monday. My skin smelled of ammonia. I was bent over the kitchen table with abdominal pain. An inner voice spoke clearly--- “pain like this you shouldn’t feel”. Saturday night Meg took me to the ER and I was admitted to the hospital with end-stage liver disease.

I was a typical twenty-six year old and had never been capital-S sick. I had had colds and several times the flu. In college I was put into the infirmary for a few days with mono. (In retrospect this could have been an early episode of my Wilson’s.) Now I found myself sharing a hospital room. One very jovial man was so obese he couldn’t move in his bed, but his friends brought him sweets. He kept saying, “I just love banana bread!” The second man never spoke; he threw up blood periodically day and night into a bucket beside his bed. Remember that first crystal-clear blue sky day in Spring, with the hills green from the Winter rain, that day when you just knew it wouldn’t rain again until the fall? It was that day, but I was trapped inside, staring out of the hospital room window, when the doctor came in to give me the prognosis. There was nothing they could do. Go home and get ready. I had maybe a year, or perhaps just a few months, left.