Searching for Cora Sue - 2 - The Diagnosis - continued

So I did what he said, and I must admit that he seemed a very nice man, and I wasn’t nearly as nervous as I'd been before he started talking with me. The nurse came and stood starchily to attention by my side. “I need to weigh you,” she said, so I stood on the large scale and she moved the disc across until it balanced, and she wrote something down. “How much do I weigh?”

“One hundred and thirty five.”

“Oh, I'd better go on a diet,” I said.

“Is that higher than usual?”

“I normally go between 125 and 130,” I said.

She made another note on her pad.

The doctor entered the room. He came and lowered the blanket to expose my chest.

“First of all I must listen to your heart beat, and see if it seems to be in its proper location.”

He seemed to be comparing it to the location of my nipples, which I thought most strange. Then he took his metal horn and placed it under my left breast, and listened to my heart. “That seems normal
enough” he said reassuringly. “There are no murmers.”

Then he explained he needed to take my blood pressure. He produced a very odd machine(see above) which was connected to a cloth which was bound around my upper arm. He used the machine to produce pressure which really hurt, but then he released it and the pain went away
instantly. He wrote some numbers down on his chart.

“I need to look at your eyes, because with kidney diseases, it is often the eyes that give it away. Ah, that is good. Your retinas look perfectly natural. You do seem to have a bit of puffiness in your
eyelid. Have you noticed puffiness elsewhere?”

“In my fingers and feet - but our weather has been so hot lately, I thought that was why.”

“Ah, I do envy you your summer weather. We in London cannot necessarily count on a summer. This year we hardly had any sunny days where the temperature got up to 80º. And what would you say the temperature is here today?”

“Oh, I think it will reach 90º, if not higher.”

“Too hot for me, although I am feeling the benefit of your lovely sunshine. My wife will hardly recognize me, I will be so brown when I return.”

While he was speaking, he was prodding me here and there - on my  ankle - on my abdomen, on my upper arm - no doubt testing for puffiness. He asked me to spread my legs and examined my private parts - again poking as if to ascertain if there was swelling.

“Well, I think you can get dressed now. I will need you to provide me with a urine specimen. The nurse will give you the container, and you need to provide as much as you can. Did you have much to drink this morning?”

“Only two cups of coffee, and the milk on my cereal.”

“How big were the cups of coffee?”

"Just normal coffee cup size."

“And about how much milk would you have put on your cereal?”

“Not much. Perhaps two ounces.”

“And did you drink any water or fruit juice?”

“No, nothing else.”

So I went off to produce my specimen, to get dressed and went to sit by his desk again. He, in the meantime, was doing some sort of test with my urine, measuring the amount, and also comparing the cloudiness to some piece of paper he held in his hand.

“Mrs. Temple, I need to ask you a few more questions if I may. Have you had any spells of what might be called seizures, or the more common word, fits?”

“No.”

“Have you had any severe headaches of late?”

“No, no more than a minor one occasionally which quickly goes with rest or food.”

“Have you had any severe backache?”

“No.”

“I’m sorry to have to be personal, but I need to know if you imbibe much alcohol in a day?”

“I have a glass of wine with my husband at our weekend meals - but not other than that.”

“Well, I am sure you are anxious for me to tell you what I think is wrong with you. Do you wish your husband to be present?”

“Only if he's around. He was seeing patients.”

“Nurse, can you check to see if Dr. Temple is in the waiting room?”

She went out and came right back. “No, he isn’t there.”

“So, you are happy for me to tell you, on your own?”

“Yes,” I said, but with great trepidation.

“I am fairly confident that you have Bright’s Disease. This is the common name for the condition of the kidneys that was first described by Dr. Bright in 1854. Basically it is nephritis, or an inflammation of the kidneys. Because your kidneys are not functioning properly, aspects of your diet and metabolism that your kidneys would normally remove from the blood are not being dealt with, and that is why your urine is cloudy. These items are in effect a sort of poison. To not put too fine a point on it, your body is slowly, but surely, poisoning you. Now, it would be indiscreet of me to pretend that this is something that you can just brush aside. It is a serious and eventually fatal disease. How quickly it becomes fatal is uncertain. I think, from my examination of you, that you are in the early stages. You have not shown the classic symptoms of those in the later stages - fits, excruciating headaches, and so on. Your eyes tell me that you have some problem with urea retention, but not a great deal at the moment.”

“So you are telling me that I am going to die sometime in the next - what - few weeks, few months, few years?”

“The progress of Bright’s disease is not completely understood. But you are in the early stages, and with a good diet and care, I think I can hopefully promise you a few years - perhaps as many as
five or six.”

“You talked about a diet. What must I eat in order to keep from getting worse?”

“Well, there are several trains of thought in this regard. I myself have done experiments regarding meat and fish and milk, and have concluded that modest amounts of these foods will not overly harm
you. But there will be certain foods you should avoid. Coffee, tea, cocoa - these are all diuretics, and for the most part you should avoid them. You should not put salt on your food or in your cooking.
You must, and I emphasize this, you must avoid all alcohol.”

“What does that leave me?”

“Well, you can eat what are called carbohydrate foods - cereals, potatoes, vegetables, fruits, and you can drink some milk, perhaps a pint.”

“Can I drink water?”

“Yes, and the more the better. Water flushes out your kidneys and dilutes the poisons that your body cannot excrete normally.”

“Why did I get this?”

“There is no answer to that. As I said before, it tends to be hereditary - but as both your parents died young of other causes, we cannot confirm that you inherited it from them. And we have no idea
whether your sister is suffering similar problems as you yourself.”

“So you think, that if I keep to the diet, I can live a normal life for several years.”

“That would be my hope for you.”

“And when it gets worse, I will know because I will get those symptoms that you mentioned - fits, headaches, back pain, swelling.”

“Yes, that is the situation. When you get to the stage when you are having fits, it usually means the end is in sight.”

“Thank you doctor, for being candid with me. I do appreciate it.”

“As you know, I am only in America for a brief visit. But I shall pass on my findings to the nephrologist here at Boston General Hospital and, of course, to your husband, so that they can continue to monitor your progress. I wish you a long and happy life.”

With that, he signaled the end of the consultation, shook my hand, and ushered me out in to the corridor where I sat by myself for a good half hour before Franklin arrived to escort me home.

 

August 10th

I have not written for some time, other than putting down the doctor’s verdict. It is not often that one is told that one is dying - and even if I am given a few years’ grace if I'm lucky - well, it's something to think about. It is so unfair. Why, dear God, why me?

August 12

I have told Franklin that I don’t want anyone to know about my diagnosis - not Frankie, not his mother, not anyone. I have adjusted my diet without causing too great hardship to myself and without anyone really noticing that anything is very different. We haven’t had any social affairs to attend - so I haven’t had the problem of refusing food or drink that I'm offered by friends. That will come, no doubt, but it hasn’t so far.

Knowing that I'm dying has made me think a lot about death. So many people that I have known have died. It is something that happens to everyone - so why should I feel that I should be special?

My mother died when I was only five. I hardly knew her. I remember her as being a fun loving, happy lady who played games and read stories to me. But then she got very sick and spent all her time in
bed, and then she was dead.

My father - whose untimely death was a freak act due to the Indian war - I cannot really grieve very greatly. We hardly knew him. He didn’t care enough about us to visit us or write to us, and even
his plans to leave things to us went awry.

Then there were deaths of friends like Phineas Barnum in 1891. Both Cora Sue and I felt his death in a very special way, as he seemed more of a father to us than our own had ever been. It was so funny when he decided to write his own obituary before he died, so that he could read it himself.

And then Gran - lovely Gran. She also died in 1891, and it is such fun that her grave is right next to Tom Thumbs and Phineas Barnum's. We didn’t plan it that way, but what better place to rest than
between those two great friends? I know. I will tell Franklin that I am to be buried there too. I want to be next to Gran - and Phineas and Tom. Our Kellogg grandmother died in 1898.

And then just this April came the news of the death of another friend, Samuel Clemens, or Mark Twain, as he is known. He also made a joke of his dying - saying that news of his death, some years ago, had been greatly exaggerated.

I wonder if Cora Sue has this same condition that I have. I have been thinking a lot about her since I visited the doctor. For awhile, although I hadn't forgotten that I had a sister, I had pushed her to
the back of my mind. But only a few weeks ago, on my birthday, I couldn’t help but hope that there might be a card from her - but there wasn’t.

We were close all through our growing up years. We did things together - including our schooling - we were in the same class in High School when we went to Bridgeport from La Crosse, and also, we
were in Normal School together. We traveled together across to Dakota Territory - now called North and South Dakota, of course. What a good time we had. I still keep in touch with a woman I met on the trip - Linda Slaughter - and she keeps me up to date with those who played a part in our Pa’s life and death.

Buffalo Bill, whose show we saw when we took our trip in 1883, has announced his retirement. What an interesting man he is. I don’t expect he will really retire - he will just go on and do something
different. I wish I could see his show once more - once more before I die. There, now I have said it. Now that I know my time is running out, I should make a list of the things I want to do or have or read or see before I die.

And at the top of that list is Cora Sue. I really want to see her again. We stayed together, at least part of the time, all during the late 80’s until I met Franklin. He came to one of my concerts in
New York, and wouldn’t rest until I agreed to see him. And then I even gave up my career and became just a piano teacher in order to live close to him while he finished at medical school. And Cora Sue was shut out. Of course she was. She didn’t have a fellow. And she still wanted me to spend my time with her - but I no longer wanted her on her own. She could join us - but it always had to be Franklin first. No wonder she felt rejected. So just after the Christmas celebration following our wedding on December 21, 1892, she left home. She said she was going to see Grandma Kellogg in Denver. She didn’t tell me she was going - and she didn’t tell Aunt Lillie. She just went and left a note.

Then we got the odd letter from her over the next few years. She had a job working as a dental assistant in Denver. She liked it there. She was never coming back to the East Coast. I wrote to her much more often than she wrote to me. First she stayed with Aunt Coralinn, as Grandma was staying with her too - but Coralinn had a great many children and I think they needed the room. And Cora Sue was not in the mood for being used as a babysitter. So she moved to her own apartment
but never wrote with the new address. That has been almost ten years. But before I die, I want to see her again. I don’t know how, but I will do it, and I must do it soon, while I am still well enough.