ERNIE AND ERNESTINA: Searching

Book Two, Chapter 83: The Interrogation Continues

The interrogation session continues.

I’m wearing Ernie’s Harris tweed jacket, his saddle oxfords, and his watch. It’s my way of bringing Ernie into the room, of tapping into his courage. He was stronger and braver than I knew, living with undiagnosed bladder cancer for the last four years of his life and probably longer than that.

He knew he was losing energy. “I’m okay in the head but not in the body,” he’d say. Or, “Everything’s a push. You don’t know how bad I feel.”

No, I didn’t know how bad he felt but I do now, and it hurts to think of Ernie’s pain, of what we accepted and accommodated.

Leaking piss? Buy adult diapers.

Pain when pissing? Grit your teeth; the pain will pass.

Blood in the piss? Call the urologist, swallow a round of antibiotics.

More blood in the piss? Put in another call. Swallow another round of antibiotics.

My attorney, Lee, continues to question the urologist, who says he informed Ernie of positive test results for bladder cancer — the first positive showing up almost four years before Ernie died. The doctor also says these positives were caused not by bladder cancer but by urinary-tract infections and a urinary stent.

Of course, urinary-tract infections and the need for a stent are both symptoms of a bladder tumor. This doctor is talking in circles. He avoids and denies the obvious. Of course he does.

I look directly at him. He does not look at me. Not once.

Of course he doesn’t.