Chapter 15: Jennifer Chancelor, Tuesday

Dad drives a hard bargain.

Strike that. Dad usually drives a hard bargain. Even for things he doesn’t really care about he will often bargain with you, just to see how much you really want the thing you’re asking for.

As in: (this happened a few months ago)

“Dad, can I go to that party on Saturday night?”
“Sure, if you do the dishwasher each night for the rest of the month.”
“But Dad, that’s your chore this week.”
“So it is, what a coincidence.”
“How about I do it for two of your nights. I’ll be out on Saturday night.”
“It will be your mother’s turn next week. Let’s include that week as well, that would make 9 days.”
“I have big tests coming up next week in Maths and Biology, I’ll want to study next week.”
“Good point, maybe you shouldn’t go to this party.”
“But Dad, nobody can study 24 hours a day. I’ll be studying for hours on Saturday and Sunday afternoon. And I won’t be late home from the party.”
“Okay, I don’t want your studying to suffer. I’ll take the two nights this week, plus a minimum of 4 hours study over the weekend, plus be home by midnight on Saturday night. Deal?”
“Okay, deal.”

So, maybe that wasn’t such a good example, but the point is, he was always going to say yes to the party, he just wanted to know if I wanted to go enough to bargain for it.

But last night, when he said, “Once only,” he used that voice he uses when he’s dug his heels in and nothing will change his mind. No bargaining, no deals. I’ve seen it over and over. Most of the time he doesn’t use that voice and you can argue your case and have a chance of convincing him. Or if you’re Estelle, you can yell at him and he’ll do what he’s told. But if he uses that voice then that’s what will happen. If you’re me or Bonnie, you can try arguing until you’re blue in the face, but you won’t get anywhere. If you’re Estelle, you can yell at him, but he’ll just walk away and do what he said he was going to do.

Okay, he’s not totally unreasonable. If you can present a good enough rationale there have been a small number of times when he’s gone away and thought about it and then come back and announced that he’d changed his mind. That doesn’t happen very often though. But it does mean that if you think you have a good case, it’s worth not giving up immediately.

So when he accepted my counter offer last night and said, “Deal,” out of nowhere, you could’ve knocked me down with a feather. Well, you could have if I was standing up. Hmm. I guess that bit of hyperbole wasn’t so relevant this time because I was already lying down, but you know what I mean. Did you notice my use of the word ‘hyperbole’? That’s what studying for the HSC does to you. It makes you use extravagant words, where a simpler word would do the job.

So anyway, I decided to hold off on saying thank you for a day so that I could spend a day anticipating it. The down-side of that was that I spent the day anticipating it. School? What school? I’m sure I was there, but I don’t remember doing anything.

Oh, I did talk to Hannah and tell her we would have to postpone her invitation to dinner. I’d invited her because she missed my party last Friday but with Mum in hospital it was all a bit too hard. She understood.

After school, I drove Bonnie to the hospital. Oh yeah, I’m using Mum’s car, since she isn’t using it. Mum was sitting up in bed and looking a lot perkier. Bonnie kicked off her shoes and crawled into bed next to Mum for a snuggle. There wasn’t room for me to do that as well, so I sat on the end of the bed.

We talked to Mum for a bit. She said she’s feeling better. She’s been able to get up and walk around provided someone walks with her because she’s a bit wobbly on her feet. They want to keep her in for another two nights. They think she should be right by Thursday morning. They even have it written on a white-board on the wall next to her bed. Patient: Estelle, Target check out: Thursday.

I got a message from Dr Puretti, asking me to go see him, so I left Bonnie with Mum and went to his office. His door was open, and he was chatting to his daughters, Mona and Gianna, about their day at school. I tapped on the door and said. “Hi.”

Dr Puretti looked up and smiled when he saw me. “Jennifer, I’m glad you dropped by. Girls, could you go and entertain yourselves for a while. I need to speak to Jennifer, then I have an appointment that will take about half an hour so if you come back in forty minutes or so, I should be all yours.”

The two girls cheerfully gave him a hug and a kiss, then left the office. They seemed used to the routine. We said hi to each other as they went past me.

Once they were gone, Dr Puretti said, “Come in and close the door. As you heard, we only have about ten minutes, but you’d be amazed how much we can do in that time.”

So we sat on his couch and he handed me a printout. Then he picked up his notebook and flipped a few pages to find the page he wanted.

“These are the results from the tests I ordered on Sunday. Those drugs were still in your system on Sunday, but the levels were clearly down on what they would’ve been when you were taking a pill each day.”

“Okay,” I said. “That’s good.”

“The good news is that everything else is normal. Once those drugs are completely gone, which might take another day or two, you will be a perfectly healthy young woman. There was a chance of some organ damage with that particular combination of drugs but there’s absolutely no sign of that.”

“That’s a relief,” I said. “You got me a bit worried about that on Sunday.”

“I’m sorry that I scared you, but it was better to be safe than sorry. This isn’t my speciality, so I’ve been on the phone and checking things with a specialist just to be sure. She confirmed everything I’m telling you now. She also said you would have grounds for legal action against the person who gave you those pills if you wanted to take it.”

“I don’t,” I said. “It seems like she was having all these mental issues and this crazy plan was a part of that. If this operation fixes that, or if you can help her get better, then there doesn’t seem much point in making a big deal out of it.”

“That sounds reasonable. Getting back to your physical health, how long until your next period is due?”

“It should start next Monday.”

He made a notation on his pad.

“That’s fine. I’m supposed to warn you that it might be a little heavier than normal. If you want to resume taking birth control pills, the specialist said you can do that once your next period is over.”

He looked down at his notes and then back to me. “Your old prescription should still be valid. As always, when re-starting birth control, don’t assume you’re protected until a month after you start taking them. If you want to speak to a regular MD about your birth control, then you should absolutely do that. If you want to speak to the specialist directly, here is her card. She said she was happy to take a call from you.”

“Okay, thank you.”

“Excellent. Now, let’s move back into the area that is my specialty. What’s going on in your head right now? How’re you feeling about things?

I talked for about five minutes and he listened carefully and made some notes. I don’t want to write everything I said but I guess you could summarise it by saying I was worried about Mum, but I was coping, particularly now that she seems to have come through the operation so well. He also asked about me and Dad but all I said was that we were getting along fine and I was still sleeping in his bed at nights but that we weren’t having sex or anything, mostly we just cuddle and talk and then sleep.

He asked me if I was enjoying the intimacy of doing that and I said, “Absolutely.”

After I left, I thought maybe I should’ve told him that I’m worried about Dad. Dad’s been showing a brave front, but I’ve been closer to him in the last few days than I’ve ever been and I’m seeing through the facade a bit more. I don’t think he knew how to cope with what happened with Estelle on Friday night. He went along with it because he had no other idea how to fix things. And he went along with it because that’s what he does when he doesn’t know what to do.

I don’t think he knew how to cope with Estelle’s collapse on Sunday and then her scan results and then her brain operation. I think it scared him, not that he would admit it. I’m sure it put him off balance. I’m sure he doesn’t know how to fix things with Estelle from here. I think he’s hoping Dr Puretti will do something magical and Estelle will be all better.

I don’t think he minded so much when I moved myself into his bed. I think he liked having me there to cuddle and talk to. I think he appreciated not being alone for the last few nights. But I think he’s worried because he doesn’t know where that’s headed.

For the record, neither do I.

Dad was still at work, so only Bonnie and I were in with Mum when Dr Nestry came in. He said he had the results from the biopsy and he wanted to talk to Mum about them. Bonnie and I said we wanted to stay, and Mum agreed. I took notes, so I could tell Dad what Dr Nestry said.

It turns out that the cyst had been there for a long time, pressing against Mum’s brain for the whole time. But for some reason it had grown bigger in the last six months or so. It turns out that she has a condition called Hyper-Nasserbrandt syndrome, which affects one type of endocrine gland and causes low levels of a type of hormone that controls the makeup of the fluid that surrounds the brain and the spine. That means that, without treatment, she would always get these slow growing cyst things in her head or along her spine. There might already be others in places where they didn’t scan like along her spine. Dr Nestry wants to try her on some medication that would encourage that particular gland to work more effectively and hopefully prevent the cysts from growing. It should even reduce the other little one that they didn’t remove on Monday. He said that if it works, then she should never need another invasive surgery. But it would mean staying on the medication long term and an annual scan to check that it was working.

Mum looked at me and said, “What do you think I should do, honey?”

“You should do this, Mum,” I said. “Definitely.”

I looked at Dr Nestry and said, “What are the side effects of this medication?”

He said, “When we start, we’ll use a stronger dose to establish the change. Once that is established, we can reduce the dosage by about 50% to maintain the levels. During that initial period, some patients report frequent but mild headaches. Once we drop the dosage, there should be no side-effects at all.”

“How long would she need to be on the higher dosage?” asked Bonnie.

“Three to four days should do it,” said Dr Nestry. “After 4 days, we would get her to come back in and we would take a sample of CSF fluid to check the hormone levels.”

“Are these the same hormones that make people do crazy things because of puberty?” asked Bonnie.

Dr Nestry looked at Bonnie. “There are a lot of hormones swimming around in your system. Only some of them are involved with puberty.” Then he shook his head. “That’s not completely true. They’re all involved to a greater or lesser extent during puberty. This is one of the lesser ones.”

“Is this condition hereditary?” I asked. “Are Bonnie and I likely to have this as well?”

He shook his head at me. “This is a very rare condition. There’s no indication of a hereditary link.”

“Okay,” I said. “What happens now?”

“We don’t want to start the medication until Estelle has recovered from the surgery.” He turned and smiled at Mum. “We’re still on track for you to go home on Thursday morning. We’ll get you to come back in next Monday for an MRI and a CSF sample. Provided the results from those two things are what we expect, we’ll start you on the medication then. Then we’ll get you back in on Friday of next week for another CSF sample. Provided that checks out, you’ll go to the lower dose. After that you will need an annual check for a few years to make sure everything is on track.”

“How often will I need to take this medication?” asked Estelle.

“It’s a single pill, taken daily. You could take it with your birth control pills if you take those.”

Mum said, “Okay,” and that was essentially the end of the conversation.

Bonnie and I sat in the room and did our homework while Mum dozed.

Later, Dad came in from work and I went through my notes with him about the meeting with Dr Nestry. He seemed satisfied with that. He seemed happy that we’d asked all the questions he could think of asking.