#142 / 2010 Pamela's Journal: Joe's Final Trek

My Journal: Beatlick Joe's Final Trek

#142

There are many journals like this one; I've read them, accounts of loved ones who survive a child's death, political injustice, all points on recovering from tragedy. So shall I account my journey with Beatlick Joe Speer.

We have been on the road for two years living in our van and haunting coffeehouses that support open-mic poetry. When we get lucky we house sit, which is often. We've published a poetry newsletter titled Beatlick News for over twenty years.

I'm overweight and weak-willed, Joe is lithe and self disciplined. It was unbelievable when we got a dignosis at the Sacred Heart Hospital on the Emerald Coast in San Destin, Florida.

Friday, November 19, 2010

Beatlick Joe had complained of a muscle cramp in his right leg and soreness on his side. Massage and aspirin wasn't helping. Then one day his leg was so swollen that we knew we had to see a doctor. And this is always a terrifying experience because I don't have insurance at all and Joe has some limited state insurance in New Mexico. Doctors and medicine, the costs associated with each, is always looming over us as we struggle on meager means.

I've got Social Security coming in and a small income from the house my mother left me back in Tennessee. Joe will get his first Social Security check next month, December, and we were so excited about having some extra money coming in so I can work on my debt load.

I commented to my friend Dana Kemp in Atlanta, whom we visited on the way to Florida, that we had just entered this state of grace: no mechanical problems with the van, one check ahead for the first time, I felt grateful but cautious. I'm so used to struggle.

Now a diagnosis of blood clots in Joe's leg and lungs. Tomorrow, Monday November 22, 2010, Dr. Johnson will do biopsies on the liver and pancreas. Screenings, sonograms and an MRI indicated a 2 centimeter mass on Joe's pancreas and lesions on his liver.

When Dr. Wolf, the day physician who first saw Joe, gave us this initial diagnosis I didn't take it very well. "This isn't good; this can't go well."

I keep up more than Joe does on things and I know how dangerous pancreatic cancer is. I jumped to the worse case scenario. As soon as these words came out of his mouth I excused myself from the room. I went out to the van in the parking lot and called my sister.

"Joe is in the hospital, they just gave him a death sentence. We aren't growing old together." I gasped for breath, felt like I was underwater drowning.

My sister has gone through open-heart surgery with her husband and understood like few others what I was feeling.

"You can't prepare yourself for this kind of news. It's beyond anything you ever imagined," Debbie said. And it was true.

I am still in shock, I go primal. My first reactions are only for myself. Joe is going to die. I'm going to grow old alone. How can I live without Joe?

I went back inside and it was obvious Joe wasn't going to leave the hospital. The clots are a great concern so he has been admitted. I am going back to get all our things from our friends house 20 miles down the road in Panama City. We'll settle into the hospital room.