From the first moment my wife discovered she had breast cancer, there was a deafening silence from the men I know. Even ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer seemed to have received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did little more than mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started this blog…
One of my fondest memories as a kid is watching the movie FANTASTIC VOYAGE. In it, a group of scientists and their ultra-futuristic laser-packing “submarine” are reduced to cell size and injected into the blood vessels of a world diplomat in order to destroy a blood clot in his brain.
What would a FANTASTIC
VOYAGE: Breast Cancer look like? I’m going to write a novel here, short chapter
by short chapter and I’m going to include the latest research and I’m going to
imagine the entire story here for your delectation. If you want to start at the
beginning, look left. Scroll down to LABELS. The first one is “A Fantastic
Cancer Voyage”. Click on it. Scroll to the bottom and you will find episode one.
Let me know what you think after you’ve read the whole thing!
Dr. Olubunmi Nwagbara – Ohloo to her friends, if not her
family – sighed as she stared out the window. Late November sleet lashed the
floor-to-ceiling window of her Mayo Medical Center upper story office. She was
rarely here. But she used it when she wanted to emphasize who was the chief decision-maker in projects she’d undertaken.
Even so, the room felt smaller again now that The Chief
Right Honorable Mister Nnamdi Oko Nwagbara, Prime Minister of the Commonwealth
of West Africa – who’d also happened to be her father – had slipped out. She
sighed. There were more consultations, more meetings, more press conferences
she had to pass through before she could even begin to prep for the surgery.
She’d scheduled it for a week from this day. Even then, it was pushing the
limits of technology to reach that point. She tapped her in-facility
communicator, disguised as a lapel pin with her name and a hovering three-dimensional
projection of the classic three shield logo. When she wondered what her purpose
was, especially during contentious funding meetings, she came back to them: the
central and largest of The Mayo’s three shields stood for patient care. The
flanking shields stood for research and education, scholarly endeavors that
kept patient care at the forefront of excellence.
A throaty alto voice answered, “Machig Rabten here.”
Ohloo said, “Come on up. I have a job for you, Machi.” She could hear the grin in her long-time colleague, once patient’s voice. A moment later, he door tweedled and she called her to come in.
Machig was older than she sounded. Approaching seventy, she was a physician’s assistant, having refused several attempts by friends and family to push her into med school. She’d wanted to work among people, not wrestle with bureaucracy. She’d served in Calcutta, Beijing, Lost Angeles, Mexico City and finally in the Mayo as Ohloo’s confidante and right-hand-woman. “So?” she said, “When do I start?”
“Start what?” Ohloo feigned surprise.
“Putting together the rest of the team. Obviously your father will represent the Christian interests of the planet while our guest all the others. I assume you’ve got Dr. Niazi in mind as well as Dr. Phan...”
“Who says I have anyone in mind? Maybe I could persuade Dr. Mean to join us.”
“Him? He’s been retired for four years. Besides, the feminists of the world would crucify you if you allowed him to be inside of the ‘the incarnation of the Buddha’. The metaphor would be entirely too juicy to ignore.”
“What about my father?”
“Old fathers are exempt from the rule because they are gender-free and merely symbolic of paternal support.”
Ohloo snorted. “You’ve got this all figured out already, don’t you?”
Unrepentant, Machi shrugged and said, “What can I say? You need me to make the smart political choices that also have the required professional credentials. More so in this surgery than in any you’ve ever chosen to perform.”
Ohloo made a face then nodded. “Agreed. Who’s my team?”
“Me, of course.”
Ohloo laughed, saying, “This has nothing whatever to do with your bid to direct the PA program at the University of United Africa, does it? I hear the Erg of Bilma is a wonderful place to be these days.”
It was Machi’s turn to lift her nose into the air, “I’m thinking no such thing. I have the pure motives of one devoted solely to your personal and professional success.” Ohloo shook her head but said nothing, content to let her right hand woman take the tiller for the moment as she continued, “You, your father, Kim Lin Ghandi’s body guard, Harini…”
“Wouldn’t it better for him to be awake out here?”
“No. Not at all. You’ll have the combined secret services of at least five super powers watching over you – our beloved CIA, the Chinese Ministry of State Security, the dear Soviet KGB's Russian successor, the FSB, our allied United Kingdom’s M16, and of course, India’s RAW agents...”
“RAW?”
“As euphemistically as we named our CIA, they call their thugs-and-goons association the Research and Analysis Wing. I’m sure they’ll be too busy spying on each other to bother much with what’s really going to be going on here.”
Ohloo frowned, going to her desk to sit down. “What’s really going on here?”
Machi straightened up, “The empowerment of women, of course. Once we’re free of breast cancer – which could have been a conspiracy of all male power figures,” she paused, glanced at Ohloo, then laughed, “Just kidding. Once women are free of this scourge and you take your methodologies to the streets of Calcutta, Lagos, and into the slums of Myanmar and Manila, women everywhere will sing your praises...”
Ohloo held up her hands in surrender, “I’m not Mother Teresa. I’m just a surgeon…”
“Who has the opportunity to free women everywhere! How can you not see that?”
“I see Kim Lin Ghandi laying in her bed while cancer eats
her body up unchecked. I need the absolute best team with me while I dive into
her bloodstream and operate. That’s all I see.
The rest of the details I’ll leave up to you.”
The rest of the details I’ll leave up to you.”
Machi’s lips twitched then she nodded. “All right. Leave it to me, Doc. I’ll shoot you a the team list with bios attached with an analysis of how the skills will interact.” She spun to leave and Ohloo stared after her a long time before she tapped her computer to life and set into answering her emails and queries.
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