The Nuclear Option

After He Said Cancer | A Memoir

What on Earth had he been thinking? It was hard to put into words how wrong he was – and how angry I was. Red with embarrassment, I turned my back on the garage and went to find him.

That he knew that the appliance repair guys would need to pick their way across the garage floor, trying not to step in the wrong place, was even worse. Grrrr….he was on such thin ice.

Even worse, a part of me realized that he was at least half right in this whole mess. Possibly even more than half. Regardless, he became 100% wrong when the dishwasher repair guys got involved.

To explain how he got into such hot water, I need to go back to the beginning.

It started when I saw a picture of an infant with a shrunken head on the front page of the newspaper in January of 2016. A new virus, called Zika virus, was infecting thousands of people in Brazil through a mosquito bite. Some of these people were pregnant during the infection. When the babies from these pregnancies were born, there was a surprisingly high rate of a birth defect called microcephaly. A word meaning small head.

When scores of these newborns with a small head were born, two child neurologists in Brazil sounded the alarm. There were far more cases than what they would normally expect. Something was causing these terrible injuries and scientists would need to figure it out fast. The newspaper article ended with the question: could Zika virus be transmitted from mother to fetus during pregnancy and cause these devastating brain injuries?

Absolutely, I thought. Shuddering, I closed the newspaper and let out a long exhale. Investigating how this new virus could pass to the fetus and cause such terrible injuries was solidly in my wheelhouse. And I wanted to help.

My time at work was split between being an obstetrician-gynecologist and a scientist studying infectious diseases that harmed a fetus during pregnancy. By this point, I had studied how viruses and bacteria could pass through the placenta for fifteen years. I also had the team in Seattle to launch the kind of research program that could make a difference.

I began calling my scientific colleagues to gauge their interest in joining me to study this new virus. Quickly and wholeheartedly, they agreed. A public health emergency, such as this one, required the entire scientific community to come together to understand the problem.

The next three months were a blur. Infants born with small heads were beginning to number in the thousands in Brazil, and the virus was spreading to nearby countries. Quickly, my standard workday went out the window and our Zika virus research program became my 24/7. Once during this time, I spoke with someone in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, who was working so much that they were sleeping in their office.

I could relate.

The crazy hours, my irritability from lack of sleep, and my withdrawal from family activities began to take a toll. I couldn’t stop thinking about work and what we needed to do quickly to make a difference. My husband and I weren’t spending quality time together anymore. He was becoming resentful that he was doing most of the childcare drop-offs, pickups, and meals – while I had disappeared down an infectious disease rabbit hole.

I couldn’t blame him, but also didn’t know what to do. This epidemic was a threat to an entire generation in Brazil, but also in South and Central America. It was spreading to other countries. Anxiety was high.

Against this backdrop, I remember one morning that I was working on my laptop in our breakfast nook. I had probably gotten up at 4:00 AM and started working. By the time my husband came into the kitchen, I had been absorbed in something for nearly 3 hours.

When he came into the kitchen, he said good morning, and then pointed to several stacks of laundry sitting on the kitchen counter. Your laundry has been sitting there for two days, he said. Are you planning to put them away?

What clothes? I said without looking up. When he didn’t respond, I looked up and could see several nicely folded stacks of clothes on the kitchen counter. Sure enough. Somehow, I hadn’t noticed them.

My husband had a habit of doing laundry that was in the laundry hamper, on almost a daily basis. If your laundry made it into the laundry hamper, he would throw it in the washer, make sure it was dried and then fold everything nicely. The folded clothes would be left on the kitchen counter by the end of the day.

All you need to do is put it away, he had said (many times). He liked having clean counters in the kitchen. Laundry wasn’t meant to be left on the kitchen counter.

I am tired and overworked, I countered. I haven’t slept more than 4 hours a night this week. My irritability surprised me. I was working too much, clearly. But publishing what we knew had urgent importance for public health. My gaze returned to my laptop, and I began typing away. I had to get this finished. Had to, had to, had to.

OK, he said, and walked away.

The three piles of laundry remained on the kitchen counter.

The next thing I recall was almost a repeat of the same conversation, but on the following day.

Are you going to put away your laundry? my husband asked.

Once again, I was sitting in the kitchen nook sometime between 6 and 7 AM, deep into analyzing new data or writing a scientific manuscript, when he interrupted my train of thought.

Oh, yes, I said. I will do it today. Of course, I would do it today.

Then, my eyes looked down at my computer screen, and I fell deeply into a train of thought, and the world around me faded away.

I don’t remember discussing the laundry on the counter again, nor did I put it away. One day, the kitchen just seemed cleaner. All thoughts of my laundry piles had long since vanished from my brain and were replaced by visions of how a virus might find its way through a placenta.

Then, I stepped into the garage.

There…on the garage floor, were the three piles of laundry that once been so nicely folded and placed on the kitchen counter. Now, they were no longer in neat piles. They must have been thrown onto the floor by someone who had carried the piles into the garage from the kitchen. Now, my clothes were strewn helter skelter over the cold garage floor.

That’s when I saw a lace edge and a bra strap on the top of the pile. It registered all at once, and I could feel the horror set in.

Several of my underwear and two bras were visible on top of the clothing pile like they were the cherry on top of an ice cream sundae. The appliance repair guys had walked through the garage many times yesterday to fix our dishwasher. They must have tiptoed around my undergarments, lying prominently in their path – and hadn’t said a word.

How many trips had they made back and forth from their vehicle to the kitchen, in full view of my intimate apparel? Six? Maybe more?

When I confronted my husband after discovering my undergarments on the garage floor. Amazingly, he was surprised that I was upset! As I had shown ‘no interest in my laundry’, he had found a new place for it that wasn’t on the kitchen counter.

“I’m on his side,” my colleague had said when I told him the story. “All you had to do was put away your laundry.”

“Shut up,” I said. “That’s beside the point.” I felt myself getting red in the face, as a smile found its way to my lips. “There’s no need to assign who was right and wrong in this whole thing...the point is that he chose the nuclear option.”

“Uh huh,” replied the colleague half-smiling.

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If you would like to read other posts, here are a few:

1. How It Began. This story is the origin of my Substack and tells the story of the first moment when we learned of my husband’s breast cancer diagnosis. https://www.afterhesaidcancer.com/p/how-it-began

2. Dandelions in the Lawn. https://open.substack.com/pub/tigerinmykitchen/p/dandelions-in-the-lawn?r=1acedj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

3. The Day He Proposed. https://www.afterhesaidcancer.com/p/along-the-salish-sea?r=1acedj

4. Surrender. https://www.afterhesaidcancer.com/p/surrender?r=1acedj