Bruce told no one else he was going to the Mayo Clinic except his brother, Brian. “I just thought someone in my family should know I was there and what was going on,” he said. “I didn’t want to alarm my parents or my sisters, so I told Brian.”
Hearing his brother’s voice, Brian was concerned—but not panicked. “I was actually happy he was going,” he said. “I told him just to do whatever the doctors told him to do and whatever Tom told him to do. When he told me about the insurance and what Tom was doing, to be honest, I wasn’t surprised. That sounded like Tom, especially where Bruce was concerned. In his own way, Tom is every bit as much Bruce’s brother, every bit as much a part of his family, as I am or any of us are. It’s been that way for a long time now.”
Marsha had coordinated their flights so they could meet in the Minneapolis airport early on Tuesday afternoon, January 14, and then take a cab from there to the Mayo. “The people at the clinic told me they were a ten-minute cab ride from the airport,” Marsha said. “So we got there, jumped in a cab, and asked to go to the Mayo Clinic.”
The cab driver’s response was surprising: “The Mayo Clinic?” he said. “You want me to take you to the Mayo Clinic from here?”
Bruce and Marsha were baffled. Was that a problem? “Not a problem,” he said. “But it’s at least an hour and a half away.”
Marsha knew that was wrong, because she’d been told the clinic was ten minutes from the airport. When she told the driver that, he nodded understandingly. “That’s true,” he said. “Unfortunately, it’s ten minutes from the airport in
Rochester
.”
Whoops. Marsha had figured that Rochester was a suburb of Minneapolis. It wasn’t. The driver was sympathetic and told them he thought there was a van that ran from the airport to the clinic that would be a whole lot cheaper than a cab ride. They piled out of the cab, went back into the airport, and found the van. By four o’clock they were sitting in Ian Hay’s office.
They liked him immediately. He was calm and friendly and clearly trying to make them as comfortable as possible. He explained that Bruce was scheduled for an MRI at six o’clock that evening, “to get it out of the way.” The next day would be the long one, starting early in the morning with a full physical. Then there would be more specialized testing from different doctors—pulmonary test, neurological tests—checking thoroughly to see what could possibly be wrong. He recommended a good Italian restaurant near the hospital and sent Bruce off to the MRI, saying he would see them first thing in the morning. Marsha called both the Watsons and Greg Rita that night to tell them what was going on. She said she would call the next night after Bruce had been through the battery of scheduled tests to give them an update.
The last thing she remembers saying to Tom and Hilary that night is, “We just have to pray that it’s nothing serious.”
It was Tom who answered. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’re praying on this end too.”
Bruce had always told Marsha that Tom wasn’t that religious. Maybe he had said it just to comfort her, but it struck her—again—how deeply Tom cared about Bruce. “I told him that night, almost as a reminder, how fortunate he was to have a friend like Tom. He just nodded his head and said, ‘I know. Trust me, I know.’”
They were up early the next day to make the short walk to Bruce’s first appointment. They were staying at a hotel inside the clinic grounds that was, like the other buildings in the complex, connected to the hospital by an indoor walkway. The weather was gray and snowy, a typical January day in Minnesota.
They started the day with Hay, and then Bruce moved through examining rooms and doctors and nurses in a blur. His last appointment of the day was with Dr. Eric Sorenson, a neurological specialist. Sorenson ran him through a number of tests, starting with an electromagnetogram to measure muscle activity. Sorenson checked both his left arm and left leg, inserting needles in the arm and the leg to take the readings. “It wasn’t painful,” Bruce remembered. “But it was uncomfortable.” Sorenson then went through a series of what Bruce would come to learn were routine neurological tests: having him walk on his heels; testing his reactions to a rubber hammer on the knees; having him hold his arms out and pushing on them to test his resistance; then the same test on the legs. There was very little talking as he worked, and Bruce remembers how tired he was starting to feel. The various tests took about forty-five minutes. Sorenson took notes throughout. It was after four o’clock and Bruce had now been getting probed and tested and marched around the hospital for close to nine hours. Sorenson finally finished and told Bruce to wait in the examining room. “I’ll be back in about ten minutes,” he said.
Bruce, dressed in a hospital gown, sat on a gurney in the small room and waited, alone, for Sorenson to return. Finally Sorenson came back into the room and stood a few feet away from him.
“Bruce,” he said, “do you know what ALS is?”
Bruce remembers his tone as matter-of-fact, although he concedes that the doctor might just have been making an effort to sound calm.
“ALS,” Bruce said. “Yes. I think I know what it is.”
He was pretty certain he knew what it was, but was hoping he was wrong.
“It’s also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease,” Sorenson said. “There’s no cure. In all likelihood, you have one to three years to live.” He paused for a moment. “I would advise that you go home and get your affairs in order.”
Bruce was dazed. He looked at the doctor for some sign: warmth, concern, humor—anything. Nothing. His face was blank. “I want to talk to Marsha,” he said. “Can I see her now?”
“Of course,” Sorenson said. “She’s right outside.”
Bruce pulled himself off the gurney, took a step toward the door, and felt the room starting to spin. He thought he was either going to pass out or get sick. “I don’t feel very good,” he said. “I need to lie down. Can you go get her?”
Sorenson nodded and went outside while Bruce stretched out on the gurney and closed his eyes. ALS? Lou Gehrig’s disease? One to three years to live? He had just turned forty-eight. He was about to get married and inherit a family. This wasn’t possible. Maybe he was dreaming. He opened his eyes and Marsha was there.
“Are you okay?” she said softly.
“No,” he said. “I’m not okay.”
Marsha looked at Sorenson. “Bruce has ALS,” the doctor said. “Lou Gehrig’s disease.”
Marsha held her hand up. “I know what it is,” she said. She had lost a close family friend—“someone I called ‘uncle’ because we were so close,” she said—five years earlier to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. She not only knew it was fatal, she knew that the way victims died was about as awful as any death can be—the mind still healthy while the body collapses around it.
Sorenson went on for several minutes about tests that needed to be done the next day to confirm his diagnosis. One would be a spinal tap to make sure Bruce didn’t have chronic Lyme disease, which sometimes manifests the same symptoms as ALS. It wasn’t likely, he said, but they would check. His tone never changed. By the time Bruce had put his clothes on and he and Marsha went back to Ian Hay’s office, he was as angry with Sorenson for his attitude as he was shocked and horrified by his diagnosis. Sorenson had briefed Hay on what he had found. The smiling, friendly man they had sat with twenty-four hours earlier was far more somber when they walked back into his office.
Bruce, looking to lighten the gloom in the room just a little, smiled at the doctor as they sat down and said, “How about that shit, huh?”
Hay smiled, shook his head, and told them how sorry he was that this was the news. Bruce was still angry about Sorenson’s approach and told Hay. He apologized and tried to explain to Bruce what he had to do the next day, starting with coming back for more testing. Then, if the diagnosis was confirmed, there were things he needed to learn more about—speech therapy, a feeding tube . . . Bruce wasn’t listening after the first couple of minutes.
“All I wanted to do was get out of there and go home,” he said. “What was the point of staying? I just wanted to get out of there.”
He didn’t tell Hay this, just listened—or pretended to listen. He was in shock. So was Marsha. He perked up only when Hay asked about the restaurant the night before and recommended another one.
“You know what I’m gonna do when I get out of here, doc?” Bruce said. “I’m gonna go buy a pack of cigarettes”—he hadn’t smoked for a week since the coughing fit—“and a nice bottle of wine.”
Hay smiled. “Have one on me,” he said.
By the time they got back to their room, the gray day had become a bleak evening. Neither of them felt like going out, so Marsha went down to the hotel lobby and brought some sandwiches back to the room. While she was gone, Bruce cried for the first time, still disbelieving what had happened to him in the last two hours. Marsha came back and they ate quietly. “We have to call Tom,” Bruce said.
“Do you want me to call?” Marsha asked.
Bruce nodded. He couldn’t bear the thought of delivering the news. Marsha took her cell phone and went into the hallway so Bruce could watch
Seinfeld,
which had always been his favorite TV show. “It was the first time in my life,” he said, “that it didn’t make me laugh.”
Marsha dialed the Watsons. Tom and Hilary were sitting in Hilary’s office in their home when Marsha called. “I’ve got some news,” Marsha said when Hilary answered. Something told Hilary instantly that it wasn’t good news, and she handed the phone to Tom, who was sitting on her desk. Tom took the phone, and Hilary sat and watched his face. “After he said hello, he listened for a few seconds, and a look came over him that told me that whatever the news was, it was as bad as it could possibly be,” she remembered. “He didn’t say anything for a while, just sat there, tears coming. Then finally he said, ‘What can we do?’”
Marsha had come straight to the point when Tom took the phone. There was no way to soften the blow at that moment. “Tom,” she said simply. “I’m afraid I have awful news. Bruce has ALS.”
That was when Watson started to cry. Marsha waited, and when he asked “What can we do,” her response was immediate: “You need to convince him to stay here for the testing tomorrow. He wants to go home.”
Watson nodded. “Let me talk to our boy,” he said, the words so soft Marsha could barely hear him.
She walked the phone back into the room and handed it to Bruce. “Tom wants to talk to you,” she said.
Again Bruce tried to lighten the moment. “You heard,” he said. “I made quad.”
Watson almost laughed at Bruce reverting to golf terminology, calling ALS a quadruple bogey. He gave his boy a pep talk: There’s a lot we can still do, we’re going to find out all we can about this thing and fight it.
But,
he added, you have to stay and finish all the testing.
“Tom, I just want to get out of here and go home,” Bruce said.
Watson became Watson—adamant. Firm. “No Bruce, you’re not going to do that,” he said. “I understand how you feel. But you have to stay. We start fighting this thing tomorrow. Okay?”
“Okay,” Bruce said, knowing Tom was right.
Then he had a thought. “You know, Tom,” he said, “it could have been worse.”
“Worse?” Watson couldn’t imagine how it could possibly have been worse.
“Well, I could have had a disease named after Liberace or something,” Bruce said. “At least Lou Gehrig was a great athlete. I’d rather tell people I have Gehrig’s disease than Liberace’s disease.”
Watson almost laughed. “You never quit, do you?” he said, smiling through his tears.
Bruce was crying too, even as he did the best he could to maintain his sense of humor. He told Watson he would stay and finish the testing and hear what the doctors had to tell him. They were both crying again by the time they hung up the phone.
Bruce and Marsha were emotionally drained by then, but Bruce asked Marsha if she could make one more phone call—to Brian, who knew they were at the Mayo and would be wondering why he hadn’t heard from them. “The worst part of these phone calls,” Marsha said later, “was that there was absolutely no way to soften the blow.” When Marsha told Brian she had terrible news, Brian, his heart suddenly pounding, said, “Is it terminal?”
Marsha paused for a second, took a deep breath, and said, “Yes.” Then she told him it was ALS.
Back at the Watsons’, Tom and Hilary had to tell Hilary’s children, all of whom knew Bruce well. When they told thirteen-year-old Paige, Hilary’s middle child, she went into her room and after a while came back with several pages of computer printouts. “When you told me about Bruce’s symptoms, I went on the computer,” she said. “This is what I came up with.”
She handed them several pages of information on ALS. That was what the computer had told her Bruce had, based on Tom and Hilary’s description of his symptoms. Tom read everything Paige handed him that night. The next morning he was up shortly after sunrise at his own computer. He began looking for every piece of information he could find on ALS—history, funding, doctors who were experts, drugs that had been tested, drugs that hadn’t been tested. When Hilary asked him what he was doing, his answer was direct:
“I’m trying to figure out a way,” he said, “to find a cure for ALS.”
At fifty-three, Tom Watson had a new mission in life. He would tackle it with every bit as much zeal as he had mustered in becoming a star on the PGA Tour. And then some.
Following Watson’s orders, Bruce returned to the hospital the next morning for more testing. Sorenson had given them a sliver of hope the day before by telling them there were tests that needed to be done to confirm the diagnosis, one of them being the spinal tap for chronic Lyme disease, the disease carried by deer ticks that had first been discovered in the town of Lyme, Connecticut. Bruce and Marsha met with Sorenson again in the afternoon, this time in his office. He walked into the room, sat down, and according to Bruce looked at the test results and said, “Yup, I was right. You have ALS.”
“Thanks for coming, take two aspirin and call me in the morning,” Bruce said. “That was his tone. Except for sounding victorious because he was right. I wanted to slug the guy.”