Life, on the Line (53 page)

The truth was that I was getting less than 200 calories per day. I was diluting apple juice fifty-fifty with water because the straight juice was too acidic for my scorched mouth. It felt like I was drinking habanero juice. I managed to get down eight ounces a day a few sips at a time. Once she heard that she realized that solid foods were out, so she began describing how to liquefy and supplement ordinary foods. I was polite as she recited some of her go-to's until she got to the third one. “You can puree canned chicken soup in a blender with some water, but just warm—anything hot would be like getting into a hot bath with a sunburn.”

That was it for the nutritionist. I stood up, thanked her for her help, and went to find my mom in the waiting room. Canned chicken soup wasn't on my repertoire even if I was indeed dying, and the thought of it pureed and lukewarm made my stomach twist. No thanks.

As we headed to the parking garage I joked to my mom that it was a good thing I was there to drive her home. She didn't laugh. She was helpless and panicking, and my attitude was not helping matters.

The IV fluids hit my bloodstream to hydrate me, and I knew it would be a battle to get home before the urge to vomit hit me. I hoped I could make it all the way home, and I drove hard on northbound Lake Shore Drive. We had made it to Navy Pier, about the midpoint of the trip, when I began to lose the fight. I looked toward the shoulder, and traffic prevented me from pulling over, so I grabbed one of the strategically placed large plastic cups I kept in the console, placed it under my mouth, eased off the accelerator, and vomited into the cup. I just kept driving. This was normal. My mom was horrified.

We arrived home at five to find that the burn masks I had ordered on the Internet had arrived. I was pretty excited to try these out, so I went upstairs and applied them to my face, hoping they would ease the pain. My mom took her spot on the couch. With my face wrapped in bandages I plunked down next to her and we sat in silence for what felt like hours.

It was a Thursday at 5:30 P.M., and I realized that the first guests were arriving at Alinea while I sat on my couch covered in bandages feeling like death and my mother periodically began to sob next to me. My mind raced between dark, amplified thoughts of my own death to worries about the mundane. Every thought was a disaster and was working over my emotions like a pro fighter hitting me with body shots, wearing me down.

I hope they remember to order roe from Stallard.

Will the regular tables be disappointed that I'm not there?

Do they need me tonight?

I love fall. I wonder if this will be my last fall.

Will Heather stay with me if they cut out my tongue? It's not fair to her.

This treatment won't work. It will come back. This is all for shit.

What will the boys do after I die? What will they become?

Nick will know what to do for the funeral.

I felt my mom's hand come to rest on my forearm. I looked up and she was looking at me and tears were running down her cheeks. “Why is she crying?” I wondered. Then she reached up with her other hand and wiped the tears from my face with a tissue.

Guess I started it.

“What's wrong, honey?”

I couldn't respond. I just sat there shaking my head, my emotions hindering any chance of articulation. I tried, but my sobbing choked off the words. It's a good thing I couldn't tell her what I was thinking:

I look like a fucking Martian.

I can't taste, talk, or swallow.

I am too young to die.

 

The restaurant was doing fine. Chef Pikus grew immensely as the responsibility for day-to-day operations shifted firmly to his shoulders. Grant's hours slowly diminished as the radiation took its toll. I would walk in to see Pikus, head down, working at a frantic pace. “How's it going, Chef?”

“It's going,” he grunted at me with a weak smile. But I knew he was killing himself to make it happen, each and every day.

Suddenly, though, without really noticing at first, Grant wasn't there. I knew he was at a low point, and while I would have wanted to be pampered, he wanted to be alone. Still, I didn't get any e-mails from him, and he wasn't online or logged into his e-mail account. I occasionally got a few words: “Feel like shit, can't eat, puking, sweating.” If he wasn't at the restaurant at all and wasn't checking in, I knew it must be bad.

I e-mailed to ask what I could do to help, if there was anything I could bring him. I heard back two days later, “No, thanks.”

Finally I couldn't take it any longer and drove by his apartment and rang the bell. After a few minutes he came to the door and I was horrified by his appearance. He waved a hand at me but said nothing, and did not offer to let me in.

“Hey. I came by to see if I could bring you some soup or help you wash up or something.” I was reaching for something to do, knowing that nothing was possible or desired. I really just wanted to see if he was alive. He shook his head at me.

I told him I would leave him alone and it was good to know he was surviving. “Another week,” was all I could muster, referring to his few remaining treatments. “Just another week.”

He shut the door and I got back in the car and drove to Alinea. Dave came over and asked if I'd seen Grant.

“Yeah, I saw him. He looks good,” I lied.

I
walked into the treatment room for the last time and sized up the linear accelerator, the official name for the machine that administered the radiation. I removed my shirt and turned to the counter where the techs kept my custom-fitted mouthpiece. It was designed to position my tongue for accurate radiation exposure, not for comfort. I forced my mouth open and slid it in. The smell of blood instantly reached my nose. I couldn't taste it, but I knew it was there. The tech entered the room and greeted me for the second time that day. “All right, last time, eh?”

I shook my head in agreement as I laid down on the platform. They strapped my head in, stepped out of the room, and the machine hummed to a start. “Yep. Last fucking time,” I thought to myself.

I had made it.

After the machine ground to a halt and they freed me from the harness, I sat up and began to gather my things. “Do you want these?”

I turned and saw the attendant holding my head harness and mouth guard. I shook my head no and then garbled, “I won't need those again.” She explained that some people liked to keep them for posterity. I wanted nothing more than to forget about the whole thing. I looked horrible, but I was still vertical. The treatment protocol had taken me to physical and mental lows that I didn't know existed, but I was relieved that regardless of the outcome—whether I lived or died—this ordeal was over.

I walked across the hall, hopped up on the table, and was greeted by Dr. Haraf for my exit exam. As was always the case, he started with a few jokes as he ran me through the standard series of tests, opening my mouth as wide as possible and turning my neck from side to side. He felt under my chin and the sides of my neck, checking the severity of the muscular atrophy caused by the radiation.

I avoided conversation as much as possible, pausing to reformulate answers to his questions in the fewest number of words. The inside of my mouth was completely raw and my body was producing mucus to protect my open sores.

“Carry-over cooking, just like a prime rib getting pulled from the oven,” Haraf joked. He explained that even though I had made it through the last of the radiation treatments, the process of cellular degradation would continue for a few weeks. It would get worse before it got better. “I told you it would be miserable, and I didn't lie. But you took it like a champ, much better than most.” I smiled at him. Somehow Dr. Haraf always made me smile despite the horror I faced. His humor always spoke to me directly. He referred to the radiation machine as his Fry Daddy and talked about eating beef tongue as he prodded my own tongue, feeling for any remnants of a tumor. “Feels good,” he said. “I can feel one tiny spot in the back, but it's likely just scar tissue. When Blair cuts you open in a month she'll know for sure. But it looks good.”

I had gone through countless hours of chemo over the past four months, and then faced down radiation twice a day for six weeks. I spent the majority of that time pulling fourteen-hour days at Alinea, acting as normally as was possible. And yet I still didn't know if it was all worth it. Did it work? Was the cancer gone?

Indications were promising, and all of the doctors agreed that the tumor seemed to have vanished based on physical exams and CT scans. But they cautiously warned that the scans were only accurate to one millimeter. That was about a thousand cells, and any one of those could be malignant and eventually a cause for reoccurrence: one would grow to two, then four, then millions. The biopsy would give a good indication of the primary tumor site, but that would be a whole month from now. The drugs and radiation would continue to do their job for another two weeks, and after that my tissue would need time to heal before surgery. No judgment could be made until then.

 

My health started improving incrementally. Slowly, without noticing any day-to-day improvement, my body began to heal. Week to week, I would notice small changes. I flew to Heather's parents' house for Thanksgiving and cooked a giant, traditional feast. I even managed to get down some mashed potatoes after dousing them heavily with gravy. But I still couldn't taste a thing, and each meal increased my panic that this might be a permanent condition. I seasoned the food by memory and by feeling the salt between my fingers.

By early December I was back in the Alinea kitchen at almost full speed. Surprisingly, my energy was increasing despite the fact that I was still not eating much in the way of solid food. I often texted Heather at 8:30 A.M., when I was heading in to work early to shoot pictures of the Alinea book and create new dishes. It felt amazing to be back. We scheduled the Alinea holiday party for the first week in December so I could attend prior to my surgery. I even had a head covered with fuzzy hair.

 

Dr. Blair explained that the team wanted her to perform a selective neck dissection to remove the majority of the lymph node chain on my left side and a more limited excision of the nodes on my right. This would increase the chances of eradicating any remaining cancerous tissue. The surgery was scheduled for December 13, 2007, exactly five months to the day after I found out I had cancer.

During a phone conversation a few days before the surgery, I asked Dr. Blair about recovery time and reminded her of my plans to fly to Washington with Heather for Christmas, then celebrate my recovery in St. Barts shortly thereafter while Alinea was on its winter break.

“Okay, then,” she said. “I guess we're not going to staple you shut—those will set off the metal detectors in the airport for sure. I'll stitch you up as pretty as I can. You do realize, however, that you will be incredibly swollen and sore. And there will be a drain tube hanging out of the back of your neck, by the way.”

Dr. Blair went on to explain that she was going to be as gentle as possible, but that the surgery would have its own set of side effects. Most notably would be giant chipmunk cheeks and a swollen neck from the lack of natural “drainage” that the lymph system normally facilitates. “We're taking that plumbing out, so it will take a while for the fluids to find a new route. In the meantime, it'll build up a bit, and that's why we have to insert the drain tube. If all goes well, we can remove it in about five days, but your movement will be very limited.”

She spoke nonchalantly about what sounded like a transformation from E.T. to Frankenstein Chef. Just when I was beginning to feel more normal, the emotional roller coaster was beginning anew.

They had, of course, warned me about all of this, but I had put it out of my mind. The surgery battered my newfound optimism in a way I didn't expect. I was once again scared of a new set of unknown challenges—and the answer to whether this was all worth doing.

The surgery was set for 7:00 A.M. My alarm went off at 5:20 and I peeked outside to see the car service I had arranged already waiting outside. As I got dressed, Heather wished me luck, then hugged me forcefully and wouldn't let go. She was scared too. I jokingly told her that it was unlikely I would die on the operating table after surviving the rest of it. The irony would be too great. I tucked her back into bed and walked outside.

Al, the driver who had taken me to some treatments when I couldn't drive myself, was familiar with the details of my story and had witnessed firsthand my physical decline. “This is it, Al,” I said as I slid into the backseat. “They're going to cut me open, pull half of my neck out, and figure out if they cured me.” He was typically a chatty guy, but this statement silenced him for the entire ride to the hospital. As we got off Lake Shore Drive he finally spoke.

“You're going to be all right, Grant. Since the first time I met you I could sense something different. You are a lucky guy, oddly enough. It isn't your time.”

With these words I picked my head up and our eyes met in the rearview mirror for a second. I pursed my lips and nodded, hoping Al was clairvoyant.

 

Dr. Klock, the anesthesiologist who I was reluctantly getting to know, briefed me on the drugs he was going to give me and confirmed that I had no known allergies. We passed the time waiting for Dr. Blair by chatting about his experiences dining at Alinea with his brother, who was a chef. “Good to know he liked it,” I thought.

The curtain flew open and a smiling Dr. Blair walked over and held my hand. “Okay, kiddo, you ready for this? Before you know it you'll be on a beach in St. Barts.” They each grabbed a side of the gurney and wheeled me to the OR.