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Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. This semi conscious

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Speaker 1: woman moaning loudly on the bench wasn't just anyone. This

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Speaker 1: was Jane, my partner of thirty years. What was happening?

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Speaker 1: Was she dying? She sure looked like she was dying.

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Speaker 1: I desperately wanted to help her, but I couldn't suppress

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Speaker 1: my fear and confusion long enough to think straight. All

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Speaker 1: the usual tricks we doctors used to create a self

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Speaker 1: protected distance between an acubely suffering patient and our own psyches,

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Speaker 1: the space that allows us to make an objective, rational

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Speaker 1: plan to help. They weren't working. They couldn't work. This

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Speaker 1: was Jane.

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Speaker 2: That's doctor Barrett Rowlins, oncologist, cancer researcher, professor at Harvard

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Speaker 2: Medical School, an author of the recent memoir In Sickness,

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Speaker 2: Barrett is a stunning story of love and subterfuge, secrecy

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Speaker 2: and honor, loyalty and heartbreak, and the way that two

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Speaker 2: brilliant people worked over time to keep themselves in the dark.

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Speaker 2: I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family Secrets. The secrets

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Speaker 2: that are kept from us, secrets we keep from others,

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Speaker 2: and the secrets we keep from ourselves. Usually I start

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Speaker 2: by asking my guests to tell me about the landscape

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Speaker 2: of their childhoods. But in your case, I'm going to

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Speaker 2: start in a different place, which is tell me how

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Speaker 2: you and Jane met oh.

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Speaker 1: I would love to. I was a medical resident at

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Speaker 1: the Boston Hospital, one of the Harvard Teaching hospitals, and

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Speaker 1: Jane was a third year medical student at Harvard Medical School.

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Speaker 1: So Jane was doing her internal medicine rotation, one of

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Speaker 1: the core rotations that medical students are required to take,

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Speaker 1: and she was doing it at the hospital where I

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Speaker 1: was working. The way that the hierarchy goes in the

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Speaker 1: hospital is that a resident like myself at that time,

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Speaker 1: as a senior resident, I was in charge of two teams,

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Speaker 1: one of which I ran, another one was run by

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Speaker 1: a junior resident, and then we had some interns working

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Speaker 1: with us, and then the medical students would be right

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Speaker 1: at the bottom of the totem pole. So there were

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Speaker 1: two female medical students who are going to be on

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Speaker 1: our joint team, one of my team, one or the

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Speaker 1: other team. So I hadn't met my students yet. But

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Speaker 1: one of my jobs at the hospital as the senior resident,

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Speaker 1: the nights that I was on call. I needed to

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Speaker 1: figure out how many beds were available in the intensive

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Speaker 1: care unit. In case anybody on the regular wards got

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Speaker 1: really sick, I would know what the capacity was for

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Speaker 1: transferring them. So I was walking through the intensive care

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Speaker 1: unit counting beds that I looked up and walking into

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Speaker 1: the intensive care unit was this tall, willowy, gorgeous woman,

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Speaker 1: you know, decked out in a short white coat, which

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Speaker 1: is the humiliating sort of costume that the third year

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Speaker 1: medical students have to wear. But she superseded the limitations

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Speaker 1: of her uniform and she walked up to me and

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Speaker 1: started asking me about some patient who was in the

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Speaker 1: intensive care unit. And you know, I didn't really know

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Speaker 1: who was in the intensive care unit because I wasn't

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Speaker 1: running the unit. I was only in their counting bits.

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Speaker 1: And her intern or resident had sent her into the

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Speaker 1: unit to find out how their patient was doing that

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Speaker 1: they had transferred the night before. A perfect thing for

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Speaker 1: a medical student to go do. But you know, again,

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Speaker 1: she was talking to the wrong person. So I said

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Speaker 1: to her, do you understand my role here? Thinking that

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Speaker 1: I would then sort of instruct her about what the

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Speaker 1: various roles are with the people that she would meet whatever.

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Speaker 1: Jane would tell this story, and she dined out in

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Speaker 1: this story a lot. She would say that I asked

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Speaker 1: her that question in the following way, do you understand

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Speaker 1: my role here? In other words, supercilious, obnoxious, And it

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Speaker 1: didn't matter how many times I tried to sort of

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Speaker 1: fight against that story. When she would tell it, she

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Speaker 1: told it so well that nobody ever believed that. It

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Speaker 1: wasn't a jerk when I talked to her about this.

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Speaker 1: But eventually, you know, I explained to her what the

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Speaker 1: roles were, and that was that. But our eyes had locked.

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Speaker 1: I don't want to say love at first sight, but

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Speaker 1: there was certainly a lot of interest at first sight.

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Speaker 1: And from that moment on we tried to find ways

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Speaker 1: to flirt with each other. If she was writing a

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Speaker 1: note in the chart, I would find some reason to

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Speaker 1: write a note in another chart, and we'd stand next

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Speaker 1: to each other and our hands would brush against each other,

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Speaker 1: you know, stuff like that. The most striking sort of

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Speaker 1: flirtation story, and this one we both agreed on, was

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Speaker 1: that another one of my jobs as a senior resident

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Speaker 1: was to work in the emergency room and see acutely

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Speaker 1: ill patients in the site who gets admitted. And one

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Speaker 1: of the jobs of a third year medical student to

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Speaker 1: sort of learn the ropes of medicine, was for every

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Speaker 1: patient that they admitted it were taken care of, they

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Speaker 1: were supposed to look at the urine from that patient

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Speaker 1: under a microscope. And in those sort of benighted times,

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Speaker 1: there was exactly one microscope in the whole hospital that

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Speaker 1: students could use, and it happened to be in the

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Speaker 1: emergency room, and Jay knew that, and she knew that

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Speaker 1: I was working there, so she kept trying to get

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Speaker 1: urine from her patients. And what she didn't remember was

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Speaker 1: that she was actually assigned to a ward of patients

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Speaker 1: who had chronic renal failure. In fact, they weren't making

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Speaker 1: any urine, and the word they were on didn't have

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Speaker 1: any bathrooms because nobody was making any urine. So after

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Speaker 1: three or four days of frustration and coming to this realization,

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Speaker 1: she went into a bathroom in another part of the

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Speaker 1: hospital and peed into a cup herself and brought her

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Speaker 1: own urine down to the emergency room so that she

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Speaker 1: could look at pretending it was one of her patients.

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Speaker 1: And she ran into me and we sort of bonded

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Speaker 1: over this really romantic little cup of urine that she

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Speaker 1: was looking at under the microscope. Things just sort of

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Speaker 1: snowballed from there. I didn't actually ask her out until

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Speaker 1: she had rotated off the service, but that's where it began.

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Speaker 2: When Barrett meets Jane, they both come to the relationship

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Speaker 2: carrying their histories. Barrett has an ex wife and a

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Speaker 2: three year old daughter named Anna, who he adores, and Jane.

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Speaker 2: Jane has her quirks. During their courtship, they're quick to

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Speaker 2: fall into young love. They find one another extraordinary, but

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Speaker 2: there are other forces at work. Barrett writes festooned with

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Speaker 2: bright red warning flags plus sirens flashing lights, but I

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Speaker 2: didn't see them. I was too far gone to let

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Speaker 2: it keep us apart.

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Speaker 1: Jane lived in Cambridge, and when I went to her apartment,

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Speaker 1: I was kind of flabbergasted to see that it was

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Speaker 1: utterly infested with cockroaches. I mean it was like something

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Speaker 1: out of a David Cronberg movie. It was really frightening,

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Speaker 1: and I was, let's say, put off by the environment.

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Speaker 1: Jane acted as if there was nothing wrong, and she

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Speaker 1: had this odd habit of, yeah, we'd be in the

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Speaker 1: middle of the conversation or watching TV or something, and

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Speaker 1: cockroach would go across the wall and she'd just reach

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Speaker 1: out with her bare hand and crush it. And I thought,

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Speaker 1: you know, okay, So I had a balance that ad

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Speaker 1: against all the good stuff, and the good stuff went

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Speaker 1: out there. Another example was in those days, Jane was

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Speaker 1: still smoking cigarettes and the sheets on her bed were

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Speaker 1: just riddled with these holes that cigarette ash had made.

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Speaker 1: And then when I asked her what it was, she said, yeah,

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Speaker 1: you know, they smoke it in bed, and you know,

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Speaker 1: the ash falls and it burns a little hole. She

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Speaker 1: never changed, she never did anything about this. This was

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Speaker 1: just sort of part of her thing and she just

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Speaker 1: didn't think about it. And then there was the night

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Speaker 1: before I began my fellow ship at Dana Farber in

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Speaker 1: medical oncology. You know, I completed my residency and now

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Speaker 1: I was going to do some specialty training, and it

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Speaker 1: was pretty high stakes for me, this sort of shift

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Speaker 1: to doing the fellowship, especially at a place like Dana

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Speaker 1: Farber with its reputation, and so I was a little

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Speaker 1: on edge. But still the night before I started, there

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Speaker 1: was a party that we were going to go to,

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Speaker 1: and Jada's didn't show up. She just never came and

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Speaker 1: I was getting more and more sort of worried about her.

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Speaker 1: And finally, you know, it got to be like eleven

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Speaker 1: or twelve o'clock at night and I needed to get

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Speaker 1: to sleep before starting my fellowship and got home called

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Speaker 1: her a bunch of times, you know, no answer. Then

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Speaker 1: finally she did answer the phone around one in the morning,

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Speaker 1: and it turned out that that night she had gone

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Speaker 1: to her ex boyfriend's house. One of these flashing red

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Speaker 1: lights was that when she started going out with me,

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Speaker 1: she was still involved in this relationship with an older guy.

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Speaker 1: Guy was older than both Jane and myself, and she

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Speaker 1: hadn't stopped that relationship when she started with me, and

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Speaker 1: she was going to use that night to stop the relationship.

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Speaker 1: But you know, one thing led to an other, she

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Speaker 1: said to me, and she ended up going to bed

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Speaker 1: with a guy, and I was floored. We had sort

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Speaker 1: of planned all this stuff, we were going to move

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Speaker 1: in together. I thought things are moving forward, and then

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Speaker 1: she does this. And her explanation to me was, you know,

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Speaker 1: she was having breakup sex. And I may be not

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Speaker 1: the most sophisticated guy in the world. And one of

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Speaker 1: the pieces of evidence for that is that I hadn't

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Speaker 1: heard of breakup sex. I mean, I now understand that

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Speaker 1: it's a thing, but at the time, it didn't feel

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Speaker 1: like a thing, and I was really fear as I

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Speaker 1: felt betrayed. I thought that she was sort of playing

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Speaker 1: with me and playing with this guy. I was pretty

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Speaker 1: angry and ended up trying not to have any contact

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Speaker 1: with her, and that lasted all of about forty eight hours,

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Speaker 1: and then we got back together and I just decided,

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Speaker 1: as I decided about so many things in the future,

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Speaker 1: I decided, I'm just not going to think about this.

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Speaker 1: Everything's flying now.

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Speaker 2: And it's funny. It's something that I've heard over the years,

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Speaker 2: which is that everything that you need to know about

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Speaker 2: somebody's marriage can actually be discerned on the first date

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Speaker 2: they're somewhere. Yeah, of course, with the twenty twenty hindsight,

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Speaker 2: but still it seems like there was, you know, this

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Speaker 2: intoxicating combination of great love and admiration. And also one

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Speaker 2: of the taglines for this show is the secrets we

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Speaker 2: keep from ourselves. In a way, you were already, it

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Speaker 2: seems to me, beginning with kind of a secret that

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Speaker 2: you were keeping from yourself, which was there are these

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Speaker 2: bright red warning lights, and I am going to ignore them.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's exactly accurate.

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Speaker 2: Barrett and Jane move in together. Both of their careers

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Speaker 2: are in a state of ascendancy. Jane lets Barrett know

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Speaker 2: right from the start that she does not want to

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Speaker 2: have children. She's entirely focused on her work and wants

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Speaker 2: to keep it that way. The idea of making a

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Speaker 2: family together is a non starter.

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Speaker 1: When I think about that time, I think of sort

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Speaker 1: of three threads that we were following. The most straightforward

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Speaker 1: one is career. I was climbing the academic ladder as

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Speaker 1: first a fellow and then a junior faculty member at

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Speaker 1: Dana Farberton Harvard. And you know, that requires a fair

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Speaker 1: amount of focus to stay on the track and a

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Speaker 1: fair amount of accomplishment to be able to stay on

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Speaker 1: the track. And I was lucky enough to be able

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Speaker 1: to do that. And I do that's not false modesty.

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Speaker 1: I really do think that I was lucky. I'm not

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Speaker 1: as smart or as naturally gifted around sciences so my

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Speaker 1: colleagues were, but I was able to make career for myself. Jane,

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Speaker 1: you know, was several years behind me, still trying to

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Speaker 1: decide where she was going to do her internship and residency,

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Speaker 1: what sub specialty she was going to be on. But still,

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Speaker 1: because she started late, she really had her eye on

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Speaker 1: where she wanted to go, and so she was working

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Speaker 1: very hard to make sure that she was sufficiently accomplished

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Speaker 1: so that all options would be open to her at

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Speaker 1: Harvard or wherever she decided she wanted to go. And

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Speaker 1: Jane was incredibly smart, incredibly quick, and would be able

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Speaker 1: to do that as long as she performed well. So

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Speaker 1: we were both really focused on career and advancement, and

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Speaker 1: that was one threat. A second threat was I learned

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Speaker 1: very very early on that the rules of our relationship

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Speaker 1: were going to be that Jane would be dependent upon

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Speaker 1: me for every practical matter. She didn't drive, I'd have

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Speaker 1: to drive her wherever she'd wanted to go. I was

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Speaker 1: responsible for doing the grocery shopping. I was responsible for

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Speaker 1: the laundry. I was responsible for finances. You know, you

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Speaker 1: could just go down the list of everything that's required

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Speaker 1: to maintain a household, and that all ended up being

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Speaker 1: my responsibility. She really liked to just lie in bed

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Speaker 1: when she wasn't busy working. You know, she was an

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Speaker 1: Olympic level sleeper and napper, and that left all the

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Speaker 1: practical stuff to me. Jane and I worked at the

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Speaker 1: same place she was at. Dana Farber also is incredibly

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Speaker 1: wonderful to be able to be working at the same

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Speaker 1: place and we knew all the same people. We went

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Speaker 1: into work together and went home together. We worked very

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Speaker 1: hard during the week, and again another domestic chore is

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Speaker 1: making meals, and so I made all of our meals.

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Speaker 1: But on Friday night we had eight night. On Friday nights,

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Speaker 1: it was my job to make a reservation at a

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Speaker 1: restaurant somewhere in Boston or Cambridge, and we would go

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Speaker 1: out to yat and we would sort of review the

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Speaker 1: week's events and gossip a little bit, and we wouldn't

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Speaker 1: linger over dinner because Jane wanted to get home. And

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Speaker 1: the reason she wanted to get home was because as

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Speaker 1: soon as she walked into the apartment, she would say,

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Speaker 1: almost every week, she would say, guess what time it is?

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Speaker 1: And I'd say, what time is it, deer, and she'd say,

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Speaker 1: it's bedtime, and she would start shedding her clothes as

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Speaker 1: she was walking to the bedroom, crawl into bed. And

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Speaker 1: listeners may think that I'm exaggerating, but she would not

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Speaker 1: pretty much get out of bed until Monday morning when

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Speaker 1: she had to go back to work. She watched TV.

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Speaker 1: She played Solitaire later you know, computer of games. I

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Speaker 1: would bring her her meals in bed and she would

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Speaker 1: just sleep, wake up, watch little TV or have a meal,

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Speaker 1: sleep again, you watch movies, sleep again. That was really

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Speaker 1: essential for her. I think had nothing to do with

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Speaker 1: the physiology of sleep. I'm still not quite sure what

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Speaker 1: it had to do with, but it was an essential

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Speaker 1: part of her personality that she be disconnected as much

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Speaker 1: as she could from the real world when the opportunity

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Speaker 1: presented itself.

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Speaker 2: And the third thread in this complex braid was Jane's

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Speaker 2: attitude toward Barrett's very young daughter Anna. Early in their relationship,

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Speaker 2: when Jane had learned about Barrett's previous marriage and daughter,

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Speaker 2: she had said, I waited for you. Why couldn't you

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Speaker 2: have waited for me? A nonsensical question, But as their

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Speaker 2: relationship continues, this is a feeling Jane maintains, and it

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Speaker 2: manifests in her not wanting to have anything to do

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Speaker 2: with Anna. Not only does she not want children, she

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Speaker 2: doesn't want a stepchild either. She has no interest in

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Speaker 2: Anna and is actively dismissive, always finding a way to

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Speaker 2: get out of seeing her when Barrett tries to get

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Speaker 2: the family together.

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Speaker 1: There was a real effort on Jane's part to deny

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Speaker 1: that I had had any other life, and this is

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Speaker 1: one of the parts of the story that I am

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Speaker 1: most deeply ashamed of. You know, there is a lot

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Speaker 1: of complicity in the kinds of secrets that couples keep,

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Speaker 1: but in this particular case, a lot of Jane's secrets

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Speaker 1: could not have been kept had I not been complicit.

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Speaker 1: And to my undying shame, I suppressed my underlying desire

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Speaker 1: to spend time with my daughter so that I wouldn't

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Speaker 1: make Jane angry or any more jealous than she had

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Speaker 1: to be. And I can't begin to tell you how

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Speaker 1: terrible I feel about that, but it's what I did.

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Speaker 2: What I'm thinking about right now, Barrett, is it's almost

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Speaker 2: like the emotional arc of how you held all this

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Speaker 2: and how it made you feel. Because what you're describing,

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Speaker 2: and this is earlish in your relationship was the initial

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Speaker 2: red flags, and then the degree of being taken care

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Speaker 2: of that Jane required, and then her inability and complete

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Speaker 2: lack of desire to have anything to do with with

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Speaker 2: your child during those years. How did you hold that?

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Speaker 2: Where did you put that? And how did it make

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Speaker 2: you feel about Jane during that time?

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Speaker 1: Early in the relationship, I would be angry. I would

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Speaker 1: try to suppress it, but it would bubble up, and

303
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Speaker 1: when it did bubble up, I would be frustrated. One

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Speaker 1: of these things happened. I just made Jane her lunch

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Speaker 1: and give it to her in bed, and then she

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Speaker 1: asked me to do something, or maybe she had refused

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Speaker 1: to see Anna the next day. And then as I

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Speaker 1: walked back to my little home office, I kicked a

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Speaker 1: huge hole in the drywall. And I surprised myself because

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Speaker 1: I'm not a demonstrative kind of guy, and when I

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Speaker 1: get angry, I really don't yell on screen and pound

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Speaker 1: the table. But clearly there was a lot of feeling

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Speaker 1: in there that came out in my right foot. I

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Speaker 1: think I remember sort of thinking to myself, Oh, holy shit,

315
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Speaker 1: this stuff is really bothering me. But I didn't do

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Speaker 1: anything about it. What I worked at, instead of dealing

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Speaker 1: with the anger like a healthy person, what I want

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Speaker 1: work that was suppressing it even more so that I

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Speaker 1: wouldn't have.

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Speaker 2: Said, Jane, We'll be right back. Years pass as Barrett

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Speaker 2: tamps down his feelings of anger, and the couple stays

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Speaker 2: deeply immersed in their very intense work. What could be

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Speaker 2: more intense than the work of saving lives. Eventually they

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Speaker 2: moved to a beautiful apartment in Boston's Back Bay, overlooking

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Speaker 2: the spot where fireworks are set off each fourth of

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Speaker 2: July at Dana Farber. Barrett and Jane have lunch together

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Speaker 2: every day. They're attached to the hip, and though they

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Speaker 2: have a world of colleagues and friends, and though a

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Speaker 2: kind of hero worship surrounds Jane, it's really just the

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Speaker 2: two of them. Even when they seem sociable.

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Speaker 1: We were very much in a bubble, which is kind

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Speaker 1: of ironic because this business, the lunch table, sort of

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Speaker 1: looms large in James legend. In fact, some of the

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Speaker 1: senior faculty members used to derisively call it Jane's high table.

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Speaker 1: There were lots of our contemporaries, and especially a younger

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Speaker 1: junior faculty, who would love to sit with us and

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Speaker 1: have lunch. And Jane, she was clever, and she was witty,

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Speaker 1: and she actually cared quite a lot about junior faculty.

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Speaker 1: You know, one of the reasons she was revered is

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Speaker 1: that she was just an outstanding mentor. She took incredible

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Speaker 1: care of the junior faculty that some of whom she

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Speaker 1: was responsible for, some of whom she wasn't. It's just

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Speaker 1: so obvious that these were surrogates for the children she

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Speaker 1: didn't have. So the lunch table, which involved a lot

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Speaker 1: of laughing and a lot of stories, and there was

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Speaker 1: a rule that you couldn't talk about your works, which

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Speaker 1: meant that anybody could then be there. Nobody was trying

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Speaker 1: to jockey for position based on the kind of stuff

349
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Speaker 1: they were working on. That was very, very social, and

350
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Speaker 1: people felt like they were our friends because we were

351
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Speaker 1: sitting around the lunch table having these raucous times. But

352
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Speaker 1: Jane would adamantly refuse, for the most part, to have

353
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Speaker 1: contact with people like that, colleagues, friends outside of that environment.

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Speaker 1: When she was home, she was home.

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Speaker 2: And also her family of origin, her mother, her brother,

356
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Speaker 2: her sister, you describe as Jane really not feeling close

357
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Speaker 2: to them.

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Speaker 1: She really pushed them away. There was sort of no

359
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Speaker 1: objective rationale. Her family was lovely. She would tolerate calls

360
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Speaker 1: from her mother she would tolerate calls from her brother.

361
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Speaker 1: She actually would not tolerate calls from her sister. From

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Speaker 1: my point of view, these were all lovely people, but

363
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Speaker 1: I was team James, so I really couldn't do much

364
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Speaker 1: about them.

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Speaker 2: Barrett and Jane have their occasional friction, as every couple does,

366
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Speaker 2: but for the most part, they've built a fulfilling life

367
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Speaker 2: together professionally and personally. In many ways, their relationship from

368
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Speaker 2: the outside is enviable. It's twenty twelve. They are about

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Speaker 2: three decades into their marriage, both at the pinnacle of

370
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Speaker 2: their careers. Jane is sixty. One week they head to

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Speaker 2: their usual lunch in the hospital cafeteria. That evening, they'll

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Speaker 2: go on their usual Friday date, business as usual, but

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Speaker 2: in an instant, the ordinary instant, as Joan Didion has

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Speaker 2: called it, catastrophe strikes.

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Speaker 1: It was just a typical day. In fact, it was

376
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Speaker 1: a Friday, and I had made reservations at our favorite

377
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Speaker 1: Mexican restaurant for date night. And what we would do

378
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Speaker 1: on you every day is I would come by Jane's

379
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Speaker 1: office and pick her up, and then we'd walk to

380
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Speaker 1: lunch together. So we're walking down the hallway to lunch,

381
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Speaker 1: and Jane Jay was very tall. She's feet even sometimes

382
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Speaker 1: sixty one when she was really standing up straight, but

383
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Speaker 1: she had this sort of loping gait like tall people have,

384
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Speaker 1: and it was always a little slower than I was.

385
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Speaker 1: But that day she was even slower than usual. You know,

386
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Speaker 1: I had the sort of what I called a Jane

387
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Speaker 1: adjusted gate that I would adopt, but she was even slower.

388
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Speaker 1: And I remember turning to her and saying, you know, Hun,

389
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Speaker 1: are you okay? And she said, yeah, yeah, it's fine.

390
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Speaker 1: And we turned the corner to the cafeteria and she

391
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Speaker 1: just plopped herself down on a little bench and her

392
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Speaker 1: lips were blue. She was breathing very hard, her eyes

393
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Speaker 1: were closed, and you know, I said, what's going on?

394
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Speaker 1: Are you all right? She said she just looked at

395
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Speaker 1: me and said, you know, really couldn't tell me what

396
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Speaker 1: was going on. So I was scared to death, and

397
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Speaker 1: I thought, you know, I've got to get her to

398
00:21:43,480 --> 00:21:46,359
Speaker 1: an emergency room. She obviously can't walk anywhere anymore. And

399
00:21:46,400 --> 00:21:49,920
Speaker 1: I look around for a wheelchair, and you would think,

400
00:21:49,960 --> 00:21:51,760
Speaker 1: of course, in a hospital he'd find a wheelchair at

401
00:21:51,760 --> 00:21:54,879
Speaker 1: every corner, but none. So I told her, you just

402
00:21:54,920 --> 00:21:56,560
Speaker 1: stay right here and do not try to get up.

403
00:21:57,080 --> 00:21:59,399
Speaker 1: We were in the building that has the cafeteria also

404
00:21:59,480 --> 00:22:01,760
Speaker 1: has in the upper floor. So I jump into an

405
00:22:01,760 --> 00:22:03,480
Speaker 1: elevator and go up to an upper floor to try

406
00:22:03,480 --> 00:22:06,600
Speaker 1: to find a wheelchair. Still can't find one. So by

407
00:22:06,640 --> 00:22:08,960
Speaker 1: that I'm still worried about Jane. So I run back

408
00:22:09,000 --> 00:22:12,320
Speaker 1: downstairs and sort of retrace the path we had been

409
00:22:12,359 --> 00:22:14,679
Speaker 1: walking on to get to the cafeteria, and I turned

410
00:22:14,680 --> 00:22:17,679
Speaker 1: that corner and now Jane is lying down on this

411
00:22:17,760 --> 00:22:20,080
Speaker 1: little bench which is way too short for her, heads

412
00:22:20,119 --> 00:22:22,879
Speaker 1: hanging off one end, theater hanging off the other, and

413
00:22:22,960 --> 00:22:27,400
Speaker 1: now she's unconscious. With every exhale she moans, and she's

414
00:22:27,440 --> 00:22:31,720
Speaker 1: having an hard time inhaling. One of my colleagues, one

415
00:22:31,720 --> 00:22:35,040
Speaker 1: of our colleagues, happened to walk by and saw this

416
00:22:35,200 --> 00:22:39,440
Speaker 1: and realized that Jane was, you know, having some sort

417
00:22:39,480 --> 00:22:42,840
Speaker 1: of cardiac or pulmonary arrest, and called you know, a

418
00:22:42,880 --> 00:22:46,520
Speaker 1: code a code red or a good It's actually called blue.

419
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Speaker 1: You know. I can't sort of overstate how surreal this

420
00:22:50,000 --> 00:22:53,800
Speaker 1: was that, you know. I then hear over the loudspeaker

421
00:22:54,119 --> 00:22:57,520
Speaker 1: code blue cafeteria, and I'm thinking, you know, part of

422
00:22:57,560 --> 00:22:59,159
Speaker 1: my brain is thinking Oh, that's an odd place to

423
00:22:59,160 --> 00:23:01,000
Speaker 1: have a code, And the other part of my brain

424
00:23:01,080 --> 00:23:03,760
Speaker 1: is thinking, you dumb assd this is what's happening right

425
00:23:03,760 --> 00:23:07,320
Speaker 1: in front of you. So, you know, the code team

426
00:23:07,560 --> 00:23:10,800
Speaker 1: arrives on the site, crash cart there with all the

427
00:23:10,840 --> 00:23:14,520
Speaker 1: equipment they need to resuscitate somebody. A colleague of ours

428
00:23:14,800 --> 00:23:17,800
Speaker 1: who was, you know, running the code team that week,

429
00:23:18,560 --> 00:23:23,760
Speaker 1: starts barking orders. They start intravenous lines, putting EKG on her.

430
00:23:24,400 --> 00:23:27,000
Speaker 1: Her heart hadn't stopped, so nobody had to do CPR,

431
00:23:27,119 --> 00:23:31,119
Speaker 1: but she was unconscious and the friend or colleague who

432
00:23:31,200 --> 00:23:35,120
Speaker 1: was running the code sort of turned to me and said,

433
00:23:35,160 --> 00:23:37,760
Speaker 1: what's going on? And I said, I have no idea.

434
00:23:37,800 --> 00:23:39,560
Speaker 1: At that point, we've looked down at there's this little

435
00:23:39,600 --> 00:23:42,240
Speaker 1: trickle of blood that's started, you know, coming from under

436
00:23:42,320 --> 00:23:45,399
Speaker 1: Jan's shirt and it's tracking up towards her neck. And

437
00:23:45,440 --> 00:23:47,760
Speaker 1: this woman looks at me again and said, basically, what

438
00:23:47,800 --> 00:23:50,480
Speaker 1: the fuck is going on here? And I just said,

439
00:23:50,480 --> 00:23:55,399
Speaker 1: I don't know. I have no idea. So Jim gets

440
00:23:55,440 --> 00:23:58,880
Speaker 1: transferred to the emergency room, and it's complicated because Dana

441
00:23:58,960 --> 00:24:01,159
Speaker 1: Farber didn't have its own emergency room. She had to

442
00:24:01,160 --> 00:24:03,159
Speaker 1: be taken to a hospital next door, and believe it

443
00:24:03,240 --> 00:24:05,960
Speaker 1: or not, they actually had to call an ambulance to

444
00:24:06,000 --> 00:24:09,000
Speaker 1: take her across the two hundred yards to the other hospital,

445
00:24:09,000 --> 00:24:12,120
Speaker 1: which meant that I couldn't ride with her. Craziest situation.

446
00:24:12,240 --> 00:24:15,359
Speaker 1: I just sort of felt buffeted. But I found my

447
00:24:15,440 --> 00:24:18,680
Speaker 1: way to the emergency room in the other hospital through

448
00:24:18,720 --> 00:24:21,200
Speaker 1: a series of bridges and got there. And by then

449
00:24:21,680 --> 00:24:25,000
Speaker 1: she had already been intubated, so she's on a ventilator.

450
00:24:25,520 --> 00:24:29,520
Speaker 1: They've removed her clothes, and she's in a hospital gown

451
00:24:29,520 --> 00:24:33,040
Speaker 1: and Johnny and I'm standing at the entrance to the room,

452
00:24:34,160 --> 00:24:36,080
Speaker 1: you know, maybe ten or twelve feet away from her,

453
00:24:36,119 --> 00:24:41,439
Speaker 1: and I notice that there's this huge lump underneath the

454
00:24:41,560 --> 00:24:44,560
Speaker 1: right side of her Johnny, on her chest, and part

455
00:24:44,560 --> 00:24:45,880
Speaker 1: of it is down a little bit, and I see

456
00:24:45,920 --> 00:24:49,240
Speaker 1: that there's this enormous mass, it's like the size of

457
00:24:49,240 --> 00:24:52,679
Speaker 1: a football, sitting on her chest. And all I can

458
00:24:52,720 --> 00:24:55,800
Speaker 1: think of it to myself is what the fuck is this?

459
00:24:56,760 --> 00:25:01,199
Speaker 1: And I gradually realized that what is growing on her

460
00:25:01,280 --> 00:25:10,400
Speaker 1: chest is an enormous, neglected, untreated breast cancer. It was black,

461
00:25:10,920 --> 00:25:13,520
Speaker 1: you know, the technical term is necrotic. That the tissue

462
00:25:13,560 --> 00:25:16,679
Speaker 1: was dying. It was oozing blood, it was oozing pus.

463
00:25:17,040 --> 00:25:20,200
Speaker 1: I just don't have the words to describe how shocking

464
00:25:20,280 --> 00:25:24,879
Speaker 1: and awful this was. And just at that moment, the

465
00:25:24,960 --> 00:25:27,680
Speaker 1: doc who was running the er who I know and

466
00:25:27,880 --> 00:25:29,760
Speaker 1: Jane Duke, came up to me and said, so, what's

467
00:25:29,760 --> 00:25:31,280
Speaker 1: the story. And I said, well, you know, we were

468
00:25:31,320 --> 00:25:33,520
Speaker 1: walking down the hallway and Jane suddenly collapsed head. Oh,

469
00:25:33,520 --> 00:25:36,199
Speaker 1: I know that she's had a huge pulmonary embulance. She

470
00:25:36,240 --> 00:25:39,280
Speaker 1: had a clot that traveled from her veins and her

471
00:25:39,359 --> 00:25:41,040
Speaker 1: legs and got lodged in her lungs and that's what

472
00:25:41,080 --> 00:25:43,359
Speaker 1: was She actually said, I know she had a palmarenesis

473
00:25:43,520 --> 00:25:46,880
Speaker 1: what's her cancer story? And I had to stand there

474
00:25:47,359 --> 00:25:50,560
Speaker 1: like the idiot I was and say to him, I

475
00:25:50,560 --> 00:25:54,040
Speaker 1: have no idea. You know, I'm her husband. She has

476
00:25:54,080 --> 00:25:56,240
Speaker 1: this thing growing on her chest that had to have

477
00:25:56,280 --> 00:25:58,040
Speaker 1: been there for years and years, and I had to

478
00:25:58,040 --> 00:26:00,600
Speaker 1: stand there and tell this guy, I don't know what's

479
00:26:00,640 --> 00:26:05,159
Speaker 1: going on. It was just awful. And then you know,

480
00:26:05,280 --> 00:26:07,720
Speaker 1: she gets taken to see t scan to take a

481
00:26:07,720 --> 00:26:12,240
Speaker 1: look at the plot. And then when she comes back,

482
00:26:12,359 --> 00:26:14,160
Speaker 1: the guy for the emergency and takes me back into

483
00:26:14,160 --> 00:26:17,080
Speaker 1: the office with a radiologist me. Now he's dealing with

484
00:26:17,080 --> 00:26:19,480
Speaker 1: me like I'm radioactive because he knows the story is

485
00:26:19,560 --> 00:26:22,560
Speaker 1: just too weird for him to handle. And he says, well,

486
00:26:22,680 --> 00:26:25,480
Speaker 1: the radiologist will tell you about the findings and the

487
00:26:25,520 --> 00:26:27,760
Speaker 1: clots there he got. But what he really points out is,

488
00:26:27,800 --> 00:26:32,359
Speaker 1: you know, whether there's this fifteen centimeter mass replacing her

489
00:26:32,560 --> 00:26:36,760
Speaker 1: right breast and it looks like there are a tasta see,

490
00:26:36,840 --> 00:26:40,280
Speaker 1: so the spread of the cancer to her ribs, her

491
00:26:40,320 --> 00:26:45,119
Speaker 1: spinal bones, there are metastatic deposits in her lungs and

492
00:26:45,200 --> 00:26:48,560
Speaker 1: in her liver. I'm just standing there. So in the

493
00:26:48,600 --> 00:26:50,760
Speaker 1: space of an hour, I discover she's got this thing

494
00:26:50,760 --> 00:26:54,080
Speaker 1: growing in her chest. But now I also discover that

495
00:26:54,160 --> 00:26:57,200
Speaker 1: the cancer has spread throughout her body, which means that

496
00:26:57,280 --> 00:27:01,399
Speaker 1: she's good to die at this and went from making

497
00:27:01,440 --> 00:27:04,320
Speaker 1: reservations at our Mexican restaurant I'm going to lunch together

498
00:27:05,200 --> 00:27:07,840
Speaker 1: a few hours later, I'm dealing with the fact that

499
00:27:07,960 --> 00:27:11,159
Speaker 1: my wife has had this secret breast cancer that is

500
00:27:11,200 --> 00:27:13,440
Speaker 1: now going to kill her and probably less than a year.

501
00:27:16,880 --> 00:27:20,440
Speaker 2: Many times on this podcast we've talked about the secrets

502
00:27:20,560 --> 00:27:23,800
Speaker 2: we keep from ourselves, or another way of putting it

503
00:27:23,840 --> 00:27:27,920
Speaker 2: is the unthought known, what we know but don't allow

504
00:27:27,960 --> 00:27:32,280
Speaker 2: ourselves to consciously hold in our minds. When asked by

505
00:27:32,280 --> 00:27:36,719
Speaker 2: the doctor about Jane's cancer story, Barrett believed himself to

506
00:27:36,720 --> 00:27:40,560
Speaker 2: be in the dark. But later Barrett realizes he did

507
00:27:40,560 --> 00:27:44,439
Speaker 2: have a story. He did have information, information about something

508
00:27:44,480 --> 00:27:48,040
Speaker 2: that had happened four years earlier, something he'd agreed to

509
00:27:48,080 --> 00:27:50,679
Speaker 2: bury deep and never speak of again.

510
00:27:53,480 --> 00:27:56,560
Speaker 1: I think this is a perfect example of the unthought known,

511
00:27:56,960 --> 00:27:59,960
Speaker 1: because it didn't occur to me to talk about this

512
00:28:00,160 --> 00:28:03,440
Speaker 1: with the doctor who ask me the question. Even later,

513
00:28:03,520 --> 00:28:07,560
Speaker 1: when the unthought numb became a little sought, I didn't

514
00:28:07,600 --> 00:28:09,399
Speaker 1: want to talk about it because it would have been

515
00:28:09,400 --> 00:28:15,280
Speaker 1: involved betraying Jane's secret, and so I had two reasons

516
00:28:15,400 --> 00:28:17,560
Speaker 1: not to sort of face that. One was that I

517
00:28:17,600 --> 00:28:19,159
Speaker 1: just didn't want to face it. The other was I

518
00:28:19,200 --> 00:28:21,520
Speaker 1: didn't want to betray Jane. And it really wasn't until

519
00:28:22,359 --> 00:28:24,680
Speaker 1: hours later, when Jane was in the intensive carry unit

520
00:28:24,760 --> 00:28:26,520
Speaker 1: and I'd finally gone home that I had to try

521
00:28:26,520 --> 00:28:29,320
Speaker 1: to get sleep that I began to face the fact

522
00:28:29,359 --> 00:28:31,439
Speaker 1: that I really didn't know what was going on, but

523
00:28:31,520 --> 00:28:34,719
Speaker 1: didn't want to think about it. In our twentieth year

524
00:28:34,760 --> 00:28:41,480
Speaker 1: of marriage, Jane suddenly became very withdrawn. All sexual intimacy stopped. Suddenly,

525
00:28:41,520 --> 00:28:45,880
Speaker 1: with no explanation. She began wearing to bed a kaftain

526
00:28:46,520 --> 00:28:49,360
Speaker 1: that went from her chin to her toes and you know,

527
00:28:49,480 --> 00:28:51,240
Speaker 1: just zipped up right below her chin, and you know,

528
00:28:51,240 --> 00:28:53,960
Speaker 1: it was a pretty potent symbol of, you know, don't

529
00:28:54,000 --> 00:28:57,120
Speaker 1: touch me, don't get anywhere near. And when I would

530
00:28:57,120 --> 00:28:59,200
Speaker 1: try to talk to her about any of this, she

531
00:28:59,240 --> 00:29:02,440
Speaker 1: would clamb up and not talk about it. And you know,

532
00:29:02,520 --> 00:29:06,240
Speaker 1: among her many quirks was the fact that she couldn't

533
00:29:06,240 --> 00:29:09,160
Speaker 1: fall asleep unless the TV was on. And up to

534
00:29:09,200 --> 00:29:11,160
Speaker 1: that point, you know, I would kind of lie there

535
00:29:11,160 --> 00:29:13,920
Speaker 1: and tolerated, and if I could hear her breathing that

536
00:29:14,000 --> 00:29:15,720
Speaker 1: suggested that she was asleep, I could turn the TV

537
00:29:15,800 --> 00:29:18,080
Speaker 1: off and roll over and I could sleep. Now, she

538
00:29:18,160 --> 00:29:20,720
Speaker 1: was also having trouble falling asleep, and I just every

539
00:29:20,720 --> 00:29:22,640
Speaker 1: time I try to turn off the TV, shees sort

540
00:29:22,640 --> 00:29:26,080
Speaker 1: of growl to me, not yet, And so you know,

541
00:29:26,120 --> 00:29:28,480
Speaker 1: it was this loss of intimacy, that's sort of refusal

542
00:29:28,520 --> 00:29:31,840
Speaker 1: to talk about things that not yet with keeping the

543
00:29:31,840 --> 00:29:33,320
Speaker 1: TV off. I have to tell you, I think I

544
00:29:33,360 --> 00:29:36,640
Speaker 1: have watched every episode of Law and Order at least

545
00:29:36,680 --> 00:29:39,400
Speaker 1: five times. That was her favorite show. But I finally

546
00:29:39,440 --> 00:29:41,600
Speaker 1: got to the point where, you know, I wasn't getting

547
00:29:41,600 --> 00:29:44,280
Speaker 1: any sleep, and so I started maybe once or twice

548
00:29:44,320 --> 00:29:46,320
Speaker 1: a week sleeping in our guest room, and then it

549
00:29:46,360 --> 00:29:47,880
Speaker 1: got to be three and four times a week, and

550
00:29:47,880 --> 00:29:49,680
Speaker 1: then finally I just threw in the towel and we

551
00:29:49,840 --> 00:29:52,920
Speaker 1: began to sleep in different rooms. And again, this was

552
00:29:52,920 --> 00:29:56,480
Speaker 1: something we just didn't talk about, just not discussed. So

553
00:29:56,680 --> 00:29:59,400
Speaker 1: there was this bizarre behavior that just came out of

554
00:29:59,440 --> 00:30:02,320
Speaker 1: nowhere in year twenty, you know, and I just adapted

555
00:30:02,360 --> 00:30:04,560
Speaker 1: to it, like I adapted to everything else with Jane.

556
00:30:04,560 --> 00:30:09,360
Speaker 1: And I think listeners have to understand how important her

557
00:30:09,400 --> 00:30:11,840
Speaker 1: approval and love was to me, and it continued to be,

558
00:30:11,880 --> 00:30:14,280
Speaker 1: and I continued to make these compromises. I thought that

559
00:30:14,320 --> 00:30:16,680
Speaker 1: these were rational decisions I was making for myself.

560
00:30:16,800 --> 00:30:19,120
Speaker 2: And you also didn't talk to anybody about it, because

561
00:30:19,280 --> 00:30:22,240
Speaker 2: to talk to anybody about it would be a betrayal

562
00:30:22,280 --> 00:30:24,720
Speaker 2: of Jane. And one of the things that was really

563
00:30:24,760 --> 00:30:27,320
Speaker 2: striking to me was there was so much that was

564
00:30:27,920 --> 00:30:30,320
Speaker 2: so much about control, so much about her need for

565
00:30:30,560 --> 00:30:33,720
Speaker 2: order in all the different ways, whether it's the weekend

566
00:30:33,760 --> 00:30:38,000
Speaker 2: long naps, or the way that she would travel with

567
00:30:38,280 --> 00:30:40,480
Speaker 2: headphones on from a minute that the cab pulled up

568
00:30:40,680 --> 00:30:42,560
Speaker 2: to the minute that she got to the hotel wherever

569
00:30:42,600 --> 00:30:44,680
Speaker 2: she was going to do whatever, Like she would have

570
00:30:45,200 --> 00:30:47,760
Speaker 2: music in her ears the entire time going through security

571
00:30:47,840 --> 00:30:50,600
Speaker 2: getting on the plane. There was this way in which,

572
00:30:51,480 --> 00:30:55,640
Speaker 2: for whatever reasons, she desperately needed to control her environment

573
00:30:56,200 --> 00:31:01,920
Speaker 2: and to upset That Apple card just came with such

574
00:31:02,040 --> 00:31:04,880
Speaker 2: risks like your anger was no match for her anger.

575
00:31:06,120 --> 00:31:09,200
Speaker 1: That's exactly right, and I really needed help. And I

576
00:31:09,320 --> 00:31:12,200
Speaker 1: wasn't averse to therapy. I had gone through six years

577
00:31:12,240 --> 00:31:15,360
Speaker 1: of analysis when I was in medical school and graduate school.

578
00:31:15,360 --> 00:31:18,080
Speaker 1: I knew how helpful it could be. But the fear

579
00:31:18,240 --> 00:31:21,440
Speaker 1: of betraying Jane and having her be angry at me

580
00:31:21,800 --> 00:31:24,560
Speaker 1: was really sufficient to keep me from seeking any outside help.

581
00:31:28,240 --> 00:31:32,320
Speaker 2: In his fear of inciting Jane's anger, Barrett had buried

582
00:31:32,360 --> 00:31:35,880
Speaker 2: a certain incident which had become part of the landscape

583
00:31:35,920 --> 00:31:40,120
Speaker 2: of his unthought known. This incident occurred on a Saturday morning,

584
00:31:40,520 --> 00:31:44,320
Speaker 2: about six years into Jane's withdrawing from intimacy and about

585
00:31:44,360 --> 00:31:46,080
Speaker 2: four years before her collapse.

586
00:31:48,720 --> 00:31:52,400
Speaker 1: So Jane was ensconced in bed and I was sort

587
00:31:52,400 --> 00:31:55,360
Speaker 1: of puttering around the apartment and I heard her call

588
00:31:55,400 --> 00:31:59,239
Speaker 1: my name, which she never did, and she was in

589
00:31:59,240 --> 00:32:02,160
Speaker 1: the bathroom and the door of the bathrooms closed, and

590
00:32:02,240 --> 00:32:05,000
Speaker 1: she called my name again, and I said through the bathroom,

591
00:32:05,520 --> 00:32:07,920
Speaker 1: what's going on? And she said you need to come in,

592
00:32:08,560 --> 00:32:10,000
Speaker 1: which you know I never did when she was in

593
00:32:10,040 --> 00:32:12,200
Speaker 1: the bathroom, so I knew something was serious. So I

594
00:32:12,240 --> 00:32:15,920
Speaker 1: walked in and the site I was met with was

595
00:32:15,920 --> 00:32:18,480
Speaker 1: was Jane lying on the floor and she had her

596
00:32:18,560 --> 00:32:21,600
Speaker 1: klftin on but it was partially unzipped and over her

597
00:32:21,680 --> 00:32:24,720
Speaker 1: right shoulder. She had a towel under the klftan and

598
00:32:24,760 --> 00:32:26,920
Speaker 1: I could see there was a little bit of blood

599
00:32:26,960 --> 00:32:28,760
Speaker 1: on the towel and I said, my god, well, you

600
00:32:28,800 --> 00:32:31,520
Speaker 1: know what's going on and she said, I'm bleeding to death.

601
00:32:32,440 --> 00:32:35,080
Speaker 1: Said you know, tell me what's going on. She said, listen,

602
00:32:35,240 --> 00:32:39,600
Speaker 1: I have breast cancer. It's invaded my skin and it's

603
00:32:39,640 --> 00:32:42,640
Speaker 1: invaded a blood vessel and I'm bleeding to death. I said, okay, well,

604
00:32:42,640 --> 00:32:44,360
Speaker 1: I'm going to call by to one one and she said,

605
00:32:44,360 --> 00:32:46,720
Speaker 1: don't you dare? And I said I was going to

606
00:32:46,720 --> 00:32:49,400
Speaker 1: do it again. And one of the only times she's

607
00:32:49,480 --> 00:32:52,560
Speaker 1: raised her voice at me. She screamed, don't you dare

608
00:32:52,600 --> 00:32:55,400
Speaker 1: do that. I will never forgive you do that. And

609
00:32:55,400 --> 00:32:57,040
Speaker 1: I said, what do you want? I just don't want

610
00:32:57,040 --> 00:33:02,800
Speaker 1: to die alone. And I again I capitulated to my shame,

611
00:33:03,000 --> 00:33:05,480
Speaker 1: but I did, and I said, well, what do you want?

612
00:33:05,760 --> 00:33:08,680
Speaker 1: And she said, well, read to me. And she had

613
00:33:08,720 --> 00:33:10,800
Speaker 1: been doing the New York Times crossword puzzle. So the

614
00:33:10,800 --> 00:33:13,120
Speaker 1: Times was in the bathrooms. I picked up the Times

615
00:33:13,680 --> 00:33:16,480
Speaker 1: and I started reading the first section to her. You know,

616
00:33:16,520 --> 00:33:18,760
Speaker 1: a bunch of stuff that neither of us was interested in,

617
00:33:18,880 --> 00:33:21,080
Speaker 1: but it was enough to distract. It was kind of like,

618
00:33:21,280 --> 00:33:24,360
Speaker 1: I guess I was fulfilling the role of law and

619
00:33:24,440 --> 00:33:26,480
Speaker 1: order on TV. It was something that kept her from

620
00:33:26,520 --> 00:33:29,560
Speaker 1: thinking about herself. And after about an hour she still

621
00:33:29,600 --> 00:33:33,920
Speaker 1: wasn't dead. And she said, okay, well looks like a

622
00:33:33,960 --> 00:33:35,960
Speaker 1: stop leading. You can go now. And I said, no,

623
00:33:36,040 --> 00:33:38,320
Speaker 1: I can't go now. You know what is going on.

624
00:33:38,440 --> 00:33:40,680
Speaker 1: She said, I'm not going to talk about it, just

625
00:33:40,680 --> 00:33:44,040
Speaker 1: go And I tried a couple more times and just impossible.

626
00:33:44,960 --> 00:33:47,160
Speaker 1: So I ended up walking out of the bathroom and

627
00:33:47,400 --> 00:33:50,160
Speaker 1: about a half an hour later, she had cleaned herself up,

628
00:33:50,240 --> 00:33:52,160
Speaker 1: or she had put on some kind of a dressing

629
00:33:52,160 --> 00:33:54,960
Speaker 1: onto the wound, and she came back out of the

630
00:33:54,960 --> 00:33:57,840
Speaker 1: bathroom and went back into bed and turned on TV

631
00:33:58,760 --> 00:34:00,360
Speaker 1: and told me what she wanted for lunch.

632
00:34:00,520 --> 00:34:04,240
Speaker 2: And we never spoke of it again in those years,

633
00:34:05,120 --> 00:34:08,480
Speaker 2: those four years between that night and then the day

634
00:34:08,480 --> 00:34:12,120
Speaker 2: that she collapsed, you never spoke of it again. Where

635
00:34:12,120 --> 00:34:14,719
Speaker 2: did it reside in you? Was it something that broke

636
00:34:14,880 --> 00:34:18,000
Speaker 2: through your thoughts, Was it something that you thought about

637
00:34:18,000 --> 00:34:20,240
Speaker 2: in the middle of the night, or did you successfully

638
00:34:20,719 --> 00:34:22,000
Speaker 2: put it away for yourself?

639
00:34:22,800 --> 00:34:27,040
Speaker 1: It would come up at really odd times. For example,

640
00:34:27,360 --> 00:34:30,160
Speaker 1: in those days, I used to run the Boston Marathon

641
00:34:30,320 --> 00:34:32,680
Speaker 1: every year, and I would raise money for Dana Farber,

642
00:34:32,800 --> 00:34:37,120
Speaker 1: and I think in retrospect, this was my attempt to

643
00:34:37,160 --> 00:34:41,040
Speaker 1: control my life. The training schedule for training for a

644
00:34:41,120 --> 00:34:44,000
Speaker 1: marathon is wrote. You know, your schedule is set for

645
00:34:44,040 --> 00:34:46,719
Speaker 1: eighteen weeks, And it was really a way for me

646
00:34:46,840 --> 00:34:48,960
Speaker 1: to put some order into what felt like a very

647
00:34:48,960 --> 00:34:52,400
Speaker 1: disordered life. I didn't start doing that until James withdrawal,

648
00:34:52,440 --> 00:34:55,319
Speaker 1: So I think the connection is pretty clear. And in

649
00:34:55,360 --> 00:34:57,400
Speaker 1: the early years when I would run the marathon, she

650
00:34:58,040 --> 00:35:00,440
Speaker 1: and a couple of people from her office would walk

651
00:35:00,480 --> 00:35:03,920
Speaker 1: down to a place along the marathon route that was

652
00:35:04,000 --> 00:35:06,120
Speaker 1: near where Data farmers, and she would sort of cheer

653
00:35:06,120 --> 00:35:08,480
Speaker 1: me on and I would stop and I would you

654
00:35:08,640 --> 00:35:10,840
Speaker 1: give her a big, sweaty kiss on the cheek and

655
00:35:10,840 --> 00:35:13,640
Speaker 1: then keep running. And I would always tease her about

656
00:35:13,640 --> 00:35:15,840
Speaker 1: the fact that she ruined my marathon times because I

657
00:35:15,840 --> 00:35:18,360
Speaker 1: always stopped to give her a kiss. And after a

658
00:35:18,400 --> 00:35:20,719
Speaker 1: while she stopped doing that. In retrospect, it was because

659
00:35:20,760 --> 00:35:22,680
Speaker 1: she was getting weaker and weaker, but I didn't really

660
00:35:22,719 --> 00:35:24,759
Speaker 1: know at the time why she had stopped doing that.

661
00:35:24,880 --> 00:35:29,120
Speaker 1: But after that episode on the bathroom floor, whenever I

662
00:35:29,160 --> 00:35:32,680
Speaker 1: would think about Jane coming down to see me running

663
00:35:32,680 --> 00:35:34,920
Speaker 1: in the marathon, I would have this thought, you know,

664
00:35:35,000 --> 00:35:36,799
Speaker 1: she's got breast cancer. She's going to die of this,

665
00:35:36,880 --> 00:35:38,480
Speaker 1: and there's going to be a time when I'm running

666
00:35:38,480 --> 00:35:40,880
Speaker 1: by there and she's not going to be there. The

667
00:35:41,080 --> 00:35:46,120
Speaker 1: rare times that she was tender were so meaningful that

668
00:35:46,560 --> 00:35:50,000
Speaker 1: her absence and the loss of those few really tender

669
00:35:50,000 --> 00:35:53,120
Speaker 1: moments was something that would allow me to think about,

670
00:35:53,400 --> 00:35:56,600
Speaker 1: you know, sort of the dire consequences of what she

671
00:35:56,640 --> 00:35:57,640
Speaker 1: had confessed.

672
00:35:57,200 --> 00:36:12,920
Speaker 2: To We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets.

673
00:36:14,160 --> 00:36:18,160
Speaker 2: About two weeks after Jane's clapse. In twenty twelve, Barrett

674
00:36:18,160 --> 00:36:22,400
Speaker 2: makes yet another discovery. While Jane is still in the ICU,

675
00:36:23,000 --> 00:36:26,480
Speaker 2: Barrett goes home to prepare for her discharge. He's cleaning

676
00:36:26,520 --> 00:36:29,239
Speaker 2: the bedroom and getting everything ready for her homecoming and

677
00:36:29,280 --> 00:36:32,720
Speaker 2: recovery when a new secret presents itself.

678
00:36:35,000 --> 00:36:37,319
Speaker 1: I go to the top tower and addresser, which is

679
00:36:37,320 --> 00:36:40,319
Speaker 1: her underwear drawer, and I start to clean it out,

680
00:36:40,320 --> 00:36:43,200
Speaker 1: and then in the back behind her underwear, my hand

681
00:36:43,320 --> 00:36:47,080
Speaker 1: hits these something that I didn't recognize. So it turned

682
00:36:47,080 --> 00:36:52,239
Speaker 1: out to be a pile of maybe twenty five or

683
00:36:52,280 --> 00:36:56,400
Speaker 1: so pill bottles. Some are empty, some are full, some

684
00:36:56,520 --> 00:37:00,080
Speaker 1: are half full. And I looked at the labels and

685
00:37:00,320 --> 00:37:06,959
Speaker 1: they were all versions of either hormonal therapy for breast

686
00:37:06,960 --> 00:37:09,640
Speaker 1: cancer or she was giving herself. But far worse were

687
00:37:10,440 --> 00:37:15,040
Speaker 1: oral versions of toxic chemotherapy. You know, chemotherapy that would

688
00:37:15,080 --> 00:37:18,040
Speaker 1: lower your blood counts, that you ill, would make you

689
00:37:18,040 --> 00:37:21,040
Speaker 1: susceptible to infections and bleeding and so on. There are

690
00:37:21,080 --> 00:37:24,439
Speaker 1: several times in this story where I stood and looked

691
00:37:24,480 --> 00:37:28,040
Speaker 1: at something for twenty seconds, thirty seconds, a long time

692
00:37:28,200 --> 00:37:31,759
Speaker 1: before I could really figure out what I was looking at.

693
00:37:31,760 --> 00:37:34,000
Speaker 1: And this is one of those examples. Jane had been

694
00:37:34,040 --> 00:37:37,919
Speaker 1: treating herself, and she'd been doing that without monitoring things

695
00:37:37,920 --> 00:37:39,600
Speaker 1: like blood counts, things that we all do as in

696
00:37:39,680 --> 00:37:42,760
Speaker 1: colleges that she did as not colleges. She was flying blind.

697
00:37:43,800 --> 00:37:46,760
Speaker 1: It in retrospect explained some things that there were times

698
00:37:46,760 --> 00:37:49,400
Speaker 1: when Jane would just be a lot sicker than usual,

699
00:37:49,440 --> 00:37:52,800
Speaker 1: a lot paler than usual, and she'd probably given herself

700
00:37:52,800 --> 00:37:55,759
Speaker 1: a little bit too much of this chemotherapy. But you

701
00:37:55,800 --> 00:38:01,359
Speaker 1: know another profound secret that was life threat. That one

702
00:38:01,400 --> 00:38:03,440
Speaker 1: I was not complicit in. That one she had completely

703
00:38:03,480 --> 00:38:05,120
Speaker 1: kept from me successfully.

704
00:38:05,600 --> 00:38:11,000
Speaker 2: One of the things among Jane's quirky behaviors is that

705
00:38:11,480 --> 00:38:14,920
Speaker 2: when it came to her own physical health, she never

706
00:38:15,040 --> 00:38:18,000
Speaker 2: ever went to the doctor. She didn't have an internist,

707
00:38:18,320 --> 00:38:20,440
Speaker 2: she didn't have a primary care physician, she didn't go

708
00:38:20,440 --> 00:38:24,000
Speaker 2: to the dentist, she didn't get pap smears. She had

709
00:38:24,600 --> 00:38:30,319
Speaker 2: what seems like was a phobia of being a patient herself,

710
00:38:30,680 --> 00:38:36,160
Speaker 2: which is so profound and ironic given that she was

711
00:38:36,239 --> 00:38:37,120
Speaker 2: an oncologist.

712
00:38:38,000 --> 00:38:42,760
Speaker 1: Yes, I think the best explanation is a phobic response,

713
00:38:43,160 --> 00:38:46,680
Speaker 1: maybe partly a phobic response to the pain or discomfort

714
00:38:46,719 --> 00:38:51,440
Speaker 1: of interventions like going to the dentist. Is uncomfortable, you know,

715
00:38:51,520 --> 00:38:54,360
Speaker 1: or it's uncomfortable to get a mammogram. But it's also

716
00:38:54,680 --> 00:38:58,080
Speaker 1: I think a phobia about loss of control. If you're

717
00:38:58,080 --> 00:39:01,440
Speaker 1: a patient, there's almost definition a loss of control or

718
00:39:01,440 --> 00:39:04,719
Speaker 1: at least some control that you're seeding to a physician,

719
00:39:05,400 --> 00:39:07,759
Speaker 1: and I think she was phobic about that too. And

720
00:39:08,239 --> 00:39:11,319
Speaker 1: you're right the irony of her going into oncology, which

721
00:39:11,360 --> 00:39:14,480
Speaker 1: is sort of nothing but serious medical problems. I mean,

722
00:39:14,480 --> 00:39:17,560
Speaker 1: one of the reasons that I went into oncology, I'll confess,

723
00:39:17,680 --> 00:39:19,920
Speaker 1: is that I'd love taking care of patients, but I

724
00:39:19,960 --> 00:39:22,160
Speaker 1: did not like taking care of the worried well. I

725
00:39:22,160 --> 00:39:25,319
Speaker 1: think there's an important role for doing that. But what

726
00:39:25,360 --> 00:39:28,080
Speaker 1: I liked about oncology was the first question in the

727
00:39:28,120 --> 00:39:32,359
Speaker 1: decision tree, is the patient sick or not? It's always yes,

728
00:39:32,440 --> 00:39:34,520
Speaker 1: the patient's sick until proven otherwise. A headache is not

729
00:39:34,520 --> 00:39:36,840
Speaker 1: always a headache, you know, A cough is not always

730
00:39:36,840 --> 00:39:39,440
Speaker 1: a cough. And I just liked being able to know

731
00:39:39,520 --> 00:39:42,560
Speaker 1: that whatever was going on was serious. And for Jane

732
00:39:42,800 --> 00:39:44,560
Speaker 1: it would have been exactly the opposite that It's one

733
00:39:44,600 --> 00:39:49,200
Speaker 1: of the reasons that she decided right away when she

734
00:39:49,280 --> 00:39:50,880
Speaker 1: was a faculty member that she just wasn't going to

735
00:39:50,880 --> 00:39:53,520
Speaker 1: see patients anymore. And when she was honest about that,

736
00:39:53,719 --> 00:39:55,600
Speaker 1: she would say one of the things that scared her

737
00:39:55,640 --> 00:39:58,720
Speaker 1: the most was how in our field at that time,

738
00:39:59,040 --> 00:40:03,000
Speaker 1: where every treatment was toxic and potentially life threatening, as

739
00:40:03,040 --> 00:40:06,120
Speaker 1: life threatening as the disease was, she was deathly afraid

740
00:40:06,680 --> 00:40:10,600
Speaker 1: of harming her patients. So, yeah, the whole thing is

741
00:40:10,640 --> 00:40:12,080
Speaker 1: just gripping with ironies.

742
00:40:12,600 --> 00:40:16,920
Speaker 2: Well and with paradoxes too, because you're not describing a

743
00:40:16,960 --> 00:40:20,320
Speaker 2: person who, on the surface of things, is tremendously empathic.

744
00:40:20,400 --> 00:40:22,560
Speaker 2: I mean, certainly she wasn't to you, you know, with

745
00:40:22,600 --> 00:40:27,040
Speaker 2: some exceptions, and yet what you're describing is as a physician,

746
00:40:27,600 --> 00:40:32,400
Speaker 2: the degree of empathy that she felt for her patience

747
00:40:32,480 --> 00:40:36,120
Speaker 2: made it unbearable for her to treat them.

748
00:40:36,560 --> 00:40:38,880
Speaker 1: It's also what made her a great doctor. Her patience

749
00:40:39,840 --> 00:40:42,200
Speaker 1: loved her. I mean, her office when she was still

750
00:40:42,239 --> 00:40:45,319
Speaker 1: seeing patients for that brief period was just filled with

751
00:40:45,480 --> 00:40:47,840
Speaker 1: Chachke's and little gifts that her patients with her, and

752
00:40:47,840 --> 00:40:50,440
Speaker 1: they would, you know, desperately try to contact her all

753
00:40:50,480 --> 00:40:53,920
Speaker 1: the time. And I think it's because there were settings

754
00:40:53,920 --> 00:40:56,960
Speaker 1: in which she allowed herself to be empathic. Couldn't do

755
00:40:57,040 --> 00:40:58,960
Speaker 1: with my daughter, but she could do it with these patients,

756
00:40:58,960 --> 00:41:00,279
Speaker 1: and they really responded to her.

757
00:41:03,200 --> 00:41:06,680
Speaker 2: Barrett spends a great deal of time trying to understand

758
00:41:07,080 --> 00:41:11,919
Speaker 2: why why did Jane treat herself? Why did she make

759
00:41:12,239 --> 00:41:16,040
Speaker 2: such a herculean effort to keep her illness a secret.

760
00:41:17,120 --> 00:41:19,960
Speaker 2: Near the end of her life, she tells Barrett a

761
00:41:20,000 --> 00:41:23,640
Speaker 2: heartbreaking story about the lengths she went to to hide

762
00:41:23,680 --> 00:41:26,880
Speaker 2: her cancer. She had made a day trip to New

763
00:41:26,960 --> 00:41:29,799
Speaker 2: York for a conference, and at the time Barrett had

764
00:41:29,840 --> 00:41:32,920
Speaker 2: wondered why she'd taken the train rather than a quick flight.

765
00:41:34,000 --> 00:41:38,880
Speaker 2: Now she tells him the truth. She had stopped flying

766
00:41:39,080 --> 00:41:41,920
Speaker 2: because on a previous work trip, she had been flagged

767
00:41:41,960 --> 00:41:45,440
Speaker 2: by a TSA agent because the dressing she'd rigged up

768
00:41:45,480 --> 00:41:50,960
Speaker 2: around her tumor had looked suspicious. She just so desperately

769
00:41:51,000 --> 00:41:54,120
Speaker 2: did not want to be seen as sick. She couldn't

770
00:41:54,120 --> 00:41:56,360
Speaker 2: bear the idea that people would respond to her with,

771
00:41:56,600 --> 00:42:01,320
Speaker 2: as Barrett puts it, a condescending mixture of indulgence and pity.

772
00:42:02,360 --> 00:42:05,520
Speaker 2: She wanted nothing to do with being a brave fighter

773
00:42:05,920 --> 00:42:09,120
Speaker 2: or engaged in a battle, or being a warrior or

774
00:42:09,160 --> 00:42:13,080
Speaker 2: fighting the good fight. All the awkward and sometimes damaging

775
00:42:13,160 --> 00:42:14,360
Speaker 2: language around cancer.

776
00:42:16,280 --> 00:42:20,560
Speaker 1: Even now, when I think about episodes like, you know,

777
00:42:20,600 --> 00:42:24,840
Speaker 1: being flagged by TSA and her being forced to reveal

778
00:42:25,040 --> 00:42:28,640
Speaker 1: her deepest, darkest secret to a bunch of strangers in

779
00:42:29,080 --> 00:42:32,640
Speaker 1: taddy uniforms, it just makes me want to cry. And

780
00:42:32,760 --> 00:42:35,160
Speaker 1: when she did go to New York and it was

781
00:42:35,200 --> 00:42:36,560
Speaker 1: to give a talk, it was part of the thing

782
00:42:36,640 --> 00:42:39,359
Speaker 1: that made her think that her life was worthwhile. And

783
00:42:39,400 --> 00:42:41,120
Speaker 1: when she forced herself and go to New York in

784
00:42:41,160 --> 00:42:43,400
Speaker 1: the train, you know, she'd also fallen on the street

785
00:42:43,480 --> 00:42:47,520
Speaker 1: and scraped her palms and she just about collapsed in penestation.

786
00:42:48,040 --> 00:42:53,319
Speaker 1: It just tears my heart out that she ended up

787
00:42:53,360 --> 00:42:57,680
Speaker 1: being subjected or subjected herself to those kinds of horrible

788
00:42:57,840 --> 00:43:01,280
Speaker 1: episodes because she couldn't control how she felt about her disease.

789
00:43:01,400 --> 00:43:03,759
Speaker 1: Is just the saddest thing in the world. You know,

790
00:43:03,800 --> 00:43:06,480
Speaker 1: her thing about the fighter, I think is really important,

791
00:43:06,680 --> 00:43:09,160
Speaker 1: and she convinced me of this really early on, long

792
00:43:09,200 --> 00:43:11,359
Speaker 1: before she ever got sick. But you know, the trump

793
00:43:11,400 --> 00:43:14,480
Speaker 1: of the fighter the reason that bothered her, especially for

794
00:43:14,560 --> 00:43:18,040
Speaker 1: something like breast cancer. Survival in breast cancer have gotten

795
00:43:18,080 --> 00:43:21,279
Speaker 1: much much better for most of our training. You know,

796
00:43:21,320 --> 00:43:24,319
Speaker 1: you could treat early stage breast cancer, but metastatic breast

797
00:43:24,360 --> 00:43:27,760
Speaker 1: cancer was simply not curable. You could make people feel better,

798
00:43:28,000 --> 00:43:29,879
Speaker 1: if you're very lucky, you could make them a little

799
00:43:29,920 --> 00:43:32,839
Speaker 1: bit longer, but you can't cure it. And the problem that,

800
00:43:32,960 --> 00:43:35,960
Speaker 1: as Jane saw it, with somebody with metastatic breast cancer

801
00:43:35,960 --> 00:43:37,600
Speaker 1: putting on a pink ribbon and saying that to fight

802
00:43:37,640 --> 00:43:41,840
Speaker 1: this thing is it gives the illusion that a patient

803
00:43:41,880 --> 00:43:45,800
Speaker 1: with metastatic breast cancer has agency when she actually doesn't.

804
00:43:46,160 --> 00:43:48,280
Speaker 1: It gives her the illusion that if she just fights

805
00:43:48,360 --> 00:43:52,000
Speaker 1: hard enough, she'll be able to overcome the breast cancer.

806
00:43:52,040 --> 00:43:56,440
Speaker 1: And when the inevitable occurs, because she doesn't have agency,

807
00:43:56,640 --> 00:43:59,960
Speaker 1: she and her family are at risk of feeling like failure.

808
00:44:00,600 --> 00:44:05,319
Speaker 1: What's worse than simply suffering from breast cancer dying of it,

809
00:44:05,320 --> 00:44:08,240
Speaker 1: it's thinking that you're doing this because you have somehow failed.

810
00:44:08,640 --> 00:44:10,720
Speaker 1: And this is I think an example of Jane's empathy

811
00:44:11,120 --> 00:44:14,919
Speaker 1: that she had empathy for patients with intractable diseases. In fact,

812
00:44:15,080 --> 00:44:17,600
Speaker 1: all of her research was about, I think, based on

813
00:44:17,640 --> 00:44:20,879
Speaker 1: empathy for patients with intractable diseases and how there are

814
00:44:20,920 --> 00:44:25,560
Speaker 1: social constructs that are in one form another kind of

815
00:44:25,600 --> 00:44:29,040
Speaker 1: like victim blaming. So I think these were actually important

816
00:44:29,080 --> 00:44:31,400
Speaker 1: concepts that she brought to the practice of oncology.

817
00:44:32,120 --> 00:44:35,000
Speaker 2: Yes, it's heartbreaking, and that was like so lucid what

818
00:44:35,080 --> 00:44:38,120
Speaker 2: you just said. And at the same time, she couldn't

819
00:44:38,160 --> 00:44:41,480
Speaker 2: extend that empathy for herself.

820
00:44:42,360 --> 00:44:45,799
Speaker 1: Now she was if you think about her career, she

821
00:44:46,280 --> 00:44:48,840
Speaker 1: made it to the pinnacle of academic medicine at the

822
00:44:48,880 --> 00:44:52,359
Speaker 1: time when there weren't very many women who were able

823
00:44:52,400 --> 00:44:55,120
Speaker 1: to do that, and her career was probably the most

824
00:44:55,120 --> 00:44:57,440
Speaker 1: important thing in her life. But I think she was

825
00:44:57,480 --> 00:45:00,600
Speaker 1: worried that if she were ever perceived as being sick,

826
00:45:00,920 --> 00:45:04,160
Speaker 1: especially if she had cancer, that she would be perceived

827
00:45:04,160 --> 00:45:07,759
Speaker 1: this week and not taken seriously by the powerful men

828
00:45:08,520 --> 00:45:11,640
Speaker 1: in academic medicine, and she just couldn't let that happen.

829
00:45:13,160 --> 00:45:17,200
Speaker 2: These stories about collapsing in New York are about the

830
00:45:17,239 --> 00:45:21,319
Speaker 2: horror of having to be taken aside at TSA and

831
00:45:21,480 --> 00:45:24,120
Speaker 2: reveal to total strangers what was going on with her.

832
00:45:24,640 --> 00:45:26,759
Speaker 2: These are stories that she didn't tell you until she

833
00:45:26,880 --> 00:45:31,040
Speaker 2: was quite near the end of her life. It sounds

834
00:45:31,080 --> 00:45:37,040
Speaker 2: like once she was out of options and you know,

835
00:45:37,120 --> 00:45:39,040
Speaker 2: came to understand that she wasn't going to be going

836
00:45:39,040 --> 00:45:41,680
Speaker 2: back to work and life was not going to be

837
00:45:41,920 --> 00:45:44,880
Speaker 2: getting back to quote unquote normal. It sounds like she

838
00:45:45,960 --> 00:45:51,319
Speaker 2: was more able to share with you some of what

839
00:45:51,719 --> 00:45:53,120
Speaker 2: her process had been.

840
00:45:53,800 --> 00:45:57,320
Speaker 1: More able, but not totally able. One of the most

841
00:45:58,120 --> 00:46:03,799
Speaker 1: tragic comic episodes in her last year was about eight

842
00:46:03,880 --> 00:46:07,160
Speaker 1: or nine months after her collapse, and so only about

843
00:46:07,400 --> 00:46:11,799
Speaker 1: four months before she died. Jane was sick enough and

844
00:46:11,920 --> 00:46:17,319
Speaker 1: you know, requiring intravenous antibiotics and sometimes requiring intravenous narcotics

845
00:46:17,360 --> 00:46:21,120
Speaker 1: for her difficulty breathing because her lung metastases had grown.

846
00:46:21,920 --> 00:46:24,080
Speaker 1: The oncologist who has taken care of her said, you know,

847
00:46:24,120 --> 00:46:28,839
Speaker 1: what you really need is an indwelling venus access line.

848
00:46:28,880 --> 00:46:31,920
Speaker 1: That's something called a portocaf that gets put in one

849
00:46:31,920 --> 00:46:35,520
Speaker 1: of the large veins in the chest, and then a

850
00:46:35,600 --> 00:46:38,840
Speaker 1: little port a little area that has a rubber stopper

851
00:46:38,880 --> 00:46:40,799
Speaker 1: in it that you can put a needle through to

852
00:46:40,920 --> 00:46:44,560
Speaker 1: inject things. Is put underneath the skin, almost like a pacemaker,

853
00:46:44,800 --> 00:46:47,360
Speaker 1: so it sort of you know, goes underneath somebody's just

854
00:46:47,440 --> 00:46:50,160
Speaker 1: lateral to somebody's shoulder. And she didn't want to do

855
00:46:50,239 --> 00:46:52,960
Speaker 1: this because you know, in our experience, especially in the

856
00:46:53,040 --> 00:46:57,040
Speaker 1: years that she was training, when somebody needed a portocaf

857
00:46:57,080 --> 00:46:59,360
Speaker 1: an indwelling line. That was sort of a sign that

858
00:46:59,400 --> 00:47:01,640
Speaker 1: things had gotten bad enoughs that you know they were

859
00:47:01,680 --> 00:47:03,920
Speaker 1: on their way out. And she never wanted to surrender,

860
00:47:04,480 --> 00:47:06,400
Speaker 1: and it took a lot of convincing to say, no,

861
00:47:06,600 --> 00:47:10,000
Speaker 1: this is really about improving your quality of life. And

862
00:47:10,080 --> 00:47:12,759
Speaker 1: she finally agreed to do it. And it required going

863
00:47:12,800 --> 00:47:15,839
Speaker 1: back into the hospital, which was a big deal because

864
00:47:15,840 --> 00:47:17,759
Speaker 1: she didn't want anyone to know that she'd come into

865
00:47:17,800 --> 00:47:21,799
Speaker 1: the hospital. So we were actually on a maternity board

866
00:47:21,800 --> 00:47:23,680
Speaker 1: way down at the end so that nobody could visit

867
00:47:23,880 --> 00:47:27,480
Speaker 1: see her. And she goes down for her surgery to

868
00:47:27,520 --> 00:47:30,480
Speaker 1: have the thing put in, and I wait for her

869
00:47:30,520 --> 00:47:33,120
Speaker 1: and she comes back and she's a little broggy. We

870
00:47:33,280 --> 00:47:35,319
Speaker 1: get back out to her room and she sits up

871
00:47:35,800 --> 00:47:39,480
Speaker 1: as the anesthesia wears off, and she feels for where

872
00:47:39,600 --> 00:47:45,920
Speaker 1: the portocath is and she screamed at me, no, how

873
00:47:45,920 --> 00:47:47,920
Speaker 1: could you let this happen? I said, well, you knew

874
00:47:47,960 --> 00:47:49,759
Speaker 1: you were going to get a portocath. No, no, no,

875
00:47:49,960 --> 00:47:52,319
Speaker 1: how could you let them put this where it was?

876
00:47:52,360 --> 00:47:54,919
Speaker 1: What she was complaining about was that it was too

877
00:47:55,040 --> 00:47:57,319
Speaker 1: close to the center of her chest, so that she

878
00:47:57,360 --> 00:47:59,640
Speaker 1: were to what she finally explained to me was that

879
00:48:00,080 --> 00:48:03,480
Speaker 1: to go back to work and wear a shirt that

880
00:48:03,640 --> 00:48:06,000
Speaker 1: was open or addressed, that even the slightest bit low

881
00:48:06,040 --> 00:48:09,640
Speaker 1: cut people could actually see this. And I thought to myself,

882
00:48:10,680 --> 00:48:14,120
Speaker 1: this is maybe the single most delusional thing that she's done.

883
00:48:14,280 --> 00:48:17,040
Speaker 1: You know, she was so clearly never ever going back

884
00:48:17,080 --> 00:48:21,640
Speaker 1: to work, but it gave me a window into her

885
00:48:21,680 --> 00:48:25,040
Speaker 1: soul and what was propelling her day to day even

886
00:48:25,080 --> 00:48:27,400
Speaker 1: at that late date was the idea that she'd be

887
00:48:27,400 --> 00:48:29,160
Speaker 1: able to go back to work and do the things

888
00:48:29,239 --> 00:48:33,239
Speaker 1: that made her life meaningful. And again, that was one

889
00:48:33,280 --> 00:48:36,640
Speaker 1: of the saddest things that I've ever experienced, the revelation

890
00:48:37,480 --> 00:48:39,279
Speaker 1: that she thought she could go back to work.

891
00:48:43,800 --> 00:48:48,120
Speaker 2: After this sad and seminal moment, Jane finally seems to

892
00:48:48,160 --> 00:48:52,480
Speaker 2: accept the reality of her fate. This acceptance extends to

893
00:48:52,520 --> 00:48:56,120
Speaker 2: a willingness to see her elderly mother and siblings. She

894
00:48:56,160 --> 00:48:58,960
Speaker 2: hadn't had a relationship with them in years, but she

895
00:48:59,000 --> 00:49:02,560
Speaker 2: agrees to see them now to say goodbye. But still

896
00:49:02,600 --> 00:49:07,160
Speaker 2: she refuses contact with Barrett's daughter Anna.

897
00:49:07,520 --> 00:49:12,280
Speaker 1: So, my daughter is an incredible person. She is saint

898
00:49:12,440 --> 00:49:15,319
Speaker 1: like she really is. I couldn't really hide from her

899
00:49:15,760 --> 00:49:19,239
Speaker 1: that Jane was not interested in her. That began when

900
00:49:19,239 --> 00:49:21,520
Speaker 1: she was three or four years old and continued until

901
00:49:21,560 --> 00:49:25,280
Speaker 1: she was in her thirties. And I just kept waiting

902
00:49:26,080 --> 00:49:28,279
Speaker 1: for her to be angry at me for letting this

903
00:49:28,400 --> 00:49:31,759
Speaker 1: happen and feeling alienated and not wanting anything to do

904
00:49:31,800 --> 00:49:35,920
Speaker 1: with me, and God damn it, she never behave that way.

905
00:49:36,239 --> 00:49:39,839
Speaker 1: We are closer now than we ever have been. Just

906
00:49:40,120 --> 00:49:42,760
Speaker 1: as every year goes by, we just get closer and closer.

907
00:49:42,760 --> 00:49:47,160
Speaker 1: And part of her saintliness was that when the whole

908
00:49:47,200 --> 00:49:50,440
Speaker 1: thing came out, she knew Jane was my wife, and

909
00:49:50,640 --> 00:49:54,080
Speaker 1: because of Anna's love for me, she said, I would

910
00:49:54,080 --> 00:49:57,080
Speaker 1: really love to come by the house and say goodbye

911
00:49:57,080 --> 00:49:59,600
Speaker 1: to Jane, which is just the most touching thing if

912
00:49:59,600 --> 00:50:02,680
Speaker 1: you think think about what she was doing. And I

913
00:50:02,680 --> 00:50:05,279
Speaker 1: wanted to say about is somebody who wanted nothing to

914
00:50:05,320 --> 00:50:07,719
Speaker 1: do with her, And so I thought, this is, you know,

915
00:50:07,760 --> 00:50:10,480
Speaker 1: the most amazing thing. This will even melt Jane's heart.

916
00:50:11,680 --> 00:50:13,960
Speaker 1: And so I went to Jane and said, listen, most

917
00:50:14,000 --> 00:50:15,759
Speaker 1: amazing thing, Anna would like to come and see you,

918
00:50:16,920 --> 00:50:21,799
Speaker 1: and Jane said absolutely not, no way, again breaking my

919
00:50:21,920 --> 00:50:23,160
Speaker 1: heart and breaking Anna's heart.

920
00:50:25,840 --> 00:50:27,799
Speaker 2: I wonder, I mean this is just occurring to me.

921
00:50:27,880 --> 00:50:33,600
Speaker 2: But I wonder whether somewhere in Jane's own psyche the

922
00:50:33,719 --> 00:50:37,719
Speaker 2: idea that there was this other person that you love

923
00:50:38,400 --> 00:50:41,320
Speaker 2: in the picture, your daughter, that was so sort of

924
00:50:41,360 --> 00:50:44,120
Speaker 2: impossible for her to tolerate that, the idea that she's

925
00:50:44,200 --> 00:50:46,279
Speaker 2: dying and that you're going to continue to have You're

926
00:50:46,320 --> 00:50:50,080
Speaker 2: going to live and have an ongoing relationship with this

927
00:50:50,120 --> 00:50:52,640
Speaker 2: other person, this other woman in the picture, that's just

928
00:50:52,680 --> 00:50:53,440
Speaker 2: my armchair.

929
00:50:54,080 --> 00:50:56,440
Speaker 1: Oh, I think that's absolutely right. I think you know,

930
00:50:56,640 --> 00:50:59,839
Speaker 1: prior to Jane's mortal illness, you just sort of disc

931
00:51:00,280 --> 00:51:04,200
Speaker 1: but pretty accurately, as jealousy. Here's this female that I'm

932
00:51:04,239 --> 00:51:06,279
Speaker 1: clearly in love with and James jealous of her. But

933
00:51:06,320 --> 00:51:10,680
Speaker 1: then once clear that Jane is dying, then you add

934
00:51:10,680 --> 00:51:13,080
Speaker 1: on to that this notion that, in a way, if

935
00:51:13,120 --> 00:51:16,480
Speaker 1: you're really a jealous and angry person, you might think,

936
00:51:17,160 --> 00:51:19,880
Speaker 1: of shit, she won. She's going to be alive and

937
00:51:19,920 --> 00:51:21,759
Speaker 1: have him, and I'm going to be gone. So I

938
00:51:21,760 --> 00:51:25,000
Speaker 1: think there was some anger there. Seven or eight years

939
00:51:25,000 --> 00:51:28,799
Speaker 1: into the marriage, I had tricked myself into thinking that

940
00:51:28,840 --> 00:51:33,640
Speaker 1: I had come to terms with james demands and any

941
00:51:33,680 --> 00:51:37,440
Speaker 1: affect that might have been associated with my frustration really

942
00:51:37,480 --> 00:51:41,080
Speaker 1: never rose again. No anger, I had no interest in

943
00:51:41,600 --> 00:51:43,960
Speaker 1: other women. I was all in in the marriage and

944
00:51:43,960 --> 00:51:46,400
Speaker 1: just figured this is it, and I've made this deal,

945
00:51:46,800 --> 00:51:49,200
Speaker 1: and it's great because she's really wonderful and I feel

946
00:51:49,200 --> 00:51:52,000
Speaker 1: really good when she directs her attention to me. And

947
00:51:52,080 --> 00:51:53,960
Speaker 1: you know, I do not doubt for a minute that

948
00:51:54,040 --> 00:51:56,600
Speaker 1: Jane loved me in her way. That was just never

949
00:51:56,640 --> 00:51:59,880
Speaker 1: a question. When things started to get tough twenty years in,

950
00:52:00,680 --> 00:52:05,239
Speaker 1: my challenge was not feeling anger. My challenge was how

951
00:52:05,280 --> 00:52:09,040
Speaker 1: to deal with the resignation. And I've had suicidal thoughts.

952
00:52:09,440 --> 00:52:12,560
Speaker 1: They were very concrete for a while. Work was difficult

953
00:52:12,640 --> 00:52:15,719
Speaker 1: at the time for a variety of reasons, and Jane's

954
00:52:15,800 --> 00:52:20,200
Speaker 1: alienation was also very difficult, and I just remember very

955
00:52:20,280 --> 00:52:23,799
Speaker 1: concrete notions of which window I was going to in

956
00:52:23,840 --> 00:52:25,640
Speaker 1: our tel floor apartment I was going to jump out

957
00:52:25,640 --> 00:52:28,000
Speaker 1: of and where I'd end up. When sometimes I would

958
00:52:28,440 --> 00:52:30,600
Speaker 1: as I was falling asleep, I would close my eyes

959
00:52:30,640 --> 00:52:33,840
Speaker 1: and imagine lifting up the sash and then lifting up

960
00:52:33,880 --> 00:52:36,720
Speaker 1: the storm window and lifting up the screen and perching

961
00:52:36,760 --> 00:52:39,840
Speaker 1: on the ledge and launching myself. Well, I know that

962
00:52:39,880 --> 00:52:43,160
Speaker 1: those are pretty scary signs, and I just didn't realize that.

963
00:52:43,239 --> 00:52:46,200
Speaker 1: In retrospect, I think about how dangerous that all was.

964
00:52:47,280 --> 00:52:52,000
Speaker 1: Once Jane collapsed, the energy flowed in a very different way.

965
00:52:52,719 --> 00:52:56,480
Speaker 1: I became, to a really striking degree just sort of

966
00:52:56,520 --> 00:52:59,560
Speaker 1: all in in taking care of her. And a huge

967
00:52:59,560 --> 00:53:05,120
Speaker 1: part of what necessity the complicated multi step procedures that

968
00:53:05,160 --> 00:53:09,000
Speaker 1: were required to take care of her tumor. And initially

969
00:53:09,000 --> 00:53:11,040
Speaker 1: they were once a day. After a while, it was

970
00:53:11,080 --> 00:53:14,319
Speaker 1: twice a day, and it was very complex, and that

971
00:53:14,440 --> 00:53:17,720
Speaker 1: had to be taken care of every day without fail,

972
00:53:18,080 --> 00:53:20,279
Speaker 1: whether the visiting nurses showed up or not. So it

973
00:53:20,360 --> 00:53:22,480
Speaker 1: invented all sorts of ways that I could do with myself.

974
00:53:23,440 --> 00:53:27,040
Speaker 1: She needed to be on blood thinners, and the most

975
00:53:27,040 --> 00:53:29,480
Speaker 1: effective ones were ones that you know, were injected under

976
00:53:29,480 --> 00:53:31,879
Speaker 1: the skin, and so every morning I had to give

977
00:53:31,920 --> 00:53:35,960
Speaker 1: her her injections in the skin of her abdomen. All

978
00:53:36,000 --> 00:53:40,120
Speaker 1: of my waking moments were spent thinking about taking care

979
00:53:40,160 --> 00:53:42,920
Speaker 1: of Jane. I think I see in retrospect that it

980
00:53:43,000 --> 00:53:46,600
Speaker 1: was a very convenient way not to think about anything

981
00:53:46,600 --> 00:53:48,920
Speaker 1: bigger than that, like, you know, what is this relationship?

982
00:53:48,960 --> 00:53:50,560
Speaker 1: What does this all mean? How am I going to

983
00:53:50,560 --> 00:53:52,960
Speaker 1: feel when she dies? I just had to spend all

984
00:53:52,960 --> 00:53:55,120
Speaker 1: of my mental energies were focused on taking care of

985
00:53:55,960 --> 00:53:58,320
Speaker 1: that was, as horrible as it was, was a luxury.

986
00:53:58,800 --> 00:54:01,080
Speaker 1: Oh and then when she was really having trouble breathing,

987
00:54:01,120 --> 00:54:04,960
Speaker 1: I was giving her intravenous narcotics through her port through

988
00:54:04,960 --> 00:54:08,399
Speaker 1: that porticath that we talked about. All these things were

989
00:54:08,440 --> 00:54:10,600
Speaker 1: just really convenient ways to keep from having to think

990
00:54:10,640 --> 00:54:11,880
Speaker 1: about her dying.

991
00:54:16,600 --> 00:54:20,280
Speaker 2: Three hundred and sixty days after Jane's collapse, she dies.

992
00:54:22,000 --> 00:54:25,279
Speaker 1: When she did die, it wasn't a matter of all

993
00:54:25,320 --> 00:54:29,520
Speaker 1: of the feelings suddenly rushing back. It was a slow,

994
00:54:29,719 --> 00:54:35,040
Speaker 1: slow progression of stuff that sort of put me back

995
00:54:35,080 --> 00:54:38,719
Speaker 1: in touch with my feelings. And they were triggered by

996
00:54:38,760 --> 00:54:41,239
Speaker 1: things like going through her closets and getting all of

997
00:54:41,280 --> 00:54:45,680
Speaker 1: her old clothes ready for goodwill. You know, among her

998
00:54:45,760 --> 00:54:49,160
Speaker 1: many other attributes, she was an incredible pack rat. I

999
00:54:49,160 --> 00:54:52,000
Speaker 1: hadn't been in her closets for decades, and I found

1000
00:54:52,920 --> 00:54:55,799
Speaker 1: shoes and outfits I remembered from thirty years earlier that

1001
00:54:55,800 --> 00:54:57,759
Speaker 1: he just hadn't thrown out. I mean, I ended up

1002
00:54:58,080 --> 00:55:01,520
Speaker 1: piling big piles of boxes full clothes for good will

1003
00:55:01,560 --> 00:55:04,040
Speaker 1: that were taller than I was in our front hall.

1004
00:55:04,040 --> 00:55:06,720
Speaker 1: I would come across things that she had left behind,

1005
00:55:07,360 --> 00:55:09,359
Speaker 1: And you know, a big part of getting in touch

1006
00:55:09,400 --> 00:55:12,400
Speaker 1: with how I was really feeling about things was that finally,

1007
00:55:13,840 --> 00:55:16,839
Speaker 1: you know, maybe two weeks after Jane died, I asked

1008
00:55:16,840 --> 00:55:20,200
Speaker 1: somebody for a referral to a therapist who I've now

1009
00:55:20,239 --> 00:55:23,440
Speaker 1: been seeing for almost eleven years. So what a relief

1010
00:55:23,440 --> 00:55:24,600
Speaker 1: to finally do that as well.

1011
00:55:28,239 --> 00:55:31,960
Speaker 2: So it's so interesting you had such fidelity to her

1012
00:55:32,360 --> 00:55:37,000
Speaker 2: secrets and not betraying them at any point, even to

1013
00:55:37,040 --> 00:55:40,120
Speaker 2: the point where keeping that information as much as you

1014
00:55:40,719 --> 00:55:44,600
Speaker 2: possibly could private and within the hospital system where you

1015
00:55:44,600 --> 00:55:47,359
Speaker 2: both worked. And now you've written a book about it

1016
00:55:47,800 --> 00:55:51,760
Speaker 2: and we're talking about it, and many people will listen

1017
00:55:51,880 --> 00:55:56,160
Speaker 2: to the story. And once she was no longer living,

1018
00:55:56,200 --> 00:55:59,680
Speaker 2: you were able to seek the conversation and the help

1019
00:55:59,760 --> 00:56:02,040
Speaker 2: and the the dialogue that you needed to be able

1020
00:56:02,120 --> 00:56:04,359
Speaker 2: to have where you no longer had to keep her

1021
00:56:04,360 --> 00:56:09,520
Speaker 2: secrets because she was gone. Was there any hesitation about

1022
00:56:09,520 --> 00:56:11,640
Speaker 2: that once she was gone or did it really feel

1023
00:56:11,640 --> 00:56:14,080
Speaker 2: like no. Now I've been living with this for so long,

1024
00:56:14,160 --> 00:56:17,080
Speaker 2: it's my right to tell this story and to lighten

1025
00:56:17,080 --> 00:56:18,160
Speaker 2: my burden in some way.

1026
00:56:18,800 --> 00:56:21,640
Speaker 1: Oh my god, Dan, there was so much reluctance so

1027
00:56:21,800 --> 00:56:26,320
Speaker 1: much took me almost ten years after James's death before

1028
00:56:26,360 --> 00:56:30,960
Speaker 1: this book was published. Initially, I would tell myself, I

1029
00:56:31,000 --> 00:56:33,439
Speaker 1: should really write this down. But then I thought, why

1030
00:56:33,440 --> 00:56:35,080
Speaker 1: would you do this? Because no one's ever going to

1031
00:56:35,120 --> 00:56:38,480
Speaker 1: read this, because you can't possibly publish this or can't

1032
00:56:38,520 --> 00:56:42,600
Speaker 1: even show it to anybody. What I thought about was

1033
00:56:42,640 --> 00:56:44,799
Speaker 1: that if I were to write this, all of these

1034
00:56:44,840 --> 00:56:48,560
Speaker 1: people who worshiped Jane, the people that she mentored, the

1035
00:56:48,600 --> 00:56:51,600
Speaker 1: people whose lives she touched, they would be furious at me.

1036
00:56:52,360 --> 00:56:55,240
Speaker 1: She wanted her secrets cap she was a private person.

1037
00:56:55,320 --> 00:57:00,399
Speaker 1: This would be a betrayal of betrayals, and so that

1038
00:57:00,719 --> 00:57:04,240
Speaker 1: was part of what sort of stayed my hand. Eventually, though,

1039
00:57:04,440 --> 00:57:07,640
Speaker 1: there were two things I realized. One was that by

1040
00:57:07,680 --> 00:57:10,080
Speaker 1: writing this down it would allow me to gain a

1041
00:57:10,080 --> 00:57:14,279
Speaker 1: little bit of control over a thirty year period of

1042
00:57:14,280 --> 00:57:16,640
Speaker 1: my life which I had very little control. That this

1043
00:57:16,800 --> 00:57:19,200
Speaker 1: was a way of sort of helping me understand what

1044
00:57:19,240 --> 00:57:23,000
Speaker 1: I had done, helping me understand the secrets and why

1045
00:57:23,040 --> 00:57:25,800
Speaker 1: I had kept secrets. You know, what the motivation was

1046
00:57:25,880 --> 00:57:28,400
Speaker 1: for being complicit in those secrets I didn't tell anybody

1047
00:57:28,400 --> 00:57:31,040
Speaker 1: else was my secret too, and that was part of it.

1048
00:57:31,360 --> 00:57:34,920
Speaker 1: But I think also I came to this realization maybe

1049
00:57:34,920 --> 00:57:37,680
Speaker 1: seven or eight years after she died, that well, you know,

1050
00:57:37,720 --> 00:57:41,320
Speaker 1: it's my story too. It's not just Jane's story, and

1051
00:57:41,440 --> 00:57:43,240
Speaker 1: I get to tell my story if I want to

1052
00:57:43,240 --> 00:57:45,400
Speaker 1: tell my story, and I can tell it in a

1053
00:57:45,400 --> 00:57:49,080
Speaker 1: way that I hope will make it clear that I

1054
00:57:49,160 --> 00:57:51,600
Speaker 1: loved Jane and that she loved me, and that this

1055
00:57:51,680 --> 00:57:57,680
Speaker 1: isn't at core a betrayal of secrets. It's a description

1056
00:57:58,560 --> 00:58:01,560
Speaker 1: I tell people. The under line story here is somebody

1057
00:58:01,640 --> 00:58:06,600
Speaker 1: keeping a big, huge, neglected breast mass a secret for

1058
00:58:06,840 --> 00:58:09,080
Speaker 1: years and years until you know it was too late

1059
00:58:09,120 --> 00:58:11,520
Speaker 1: to do anything about it. And she's oncologist by the way,

1060
00:58:11,840 --> 00:58:13,720
Speaker 1: you know, and brilliant by the way. You know. It's

1061
00:58:13,800 --> 00:58:17,640
Speaker 1: very lurid. But the core story is a story of

1062
00:58:17,640 --> 00:58:21,680
Speaker 1: a marriage, and it's a story about the deals that

1063
00:58:21,680 --> 00:58:24,120
Speaker 1: we make with each other in couples, the deals that

1064
00:58:24,160 --> 00:58:26,520
Speaker 1: couples make with each other, and the sort of arrangements

1065
00:58:26,520 --> 00:58:30,800
Speaker 1: that they make, most of which are not explicit, in

1066
00:58:30,880 --> 00:58:33,200
Speaker 1: order to stay together for thirty years. And if you

1067
00:58:33,240 --> 00:58:36,680
Speaker 1: strip out the lurid aspects, that's what it's about. And

1068
00:58:36,680 --> 00:58:39,000
Speaker 1: it really has to do with you know, what secrets

1069
00:58:39,040 --> 00:58:41,360
Speaker 1: are acceptable, which ones aren't, which ones can you talk

1070
00:58:41,360 --> 00:58:43,440
Speaker 1: about with you know, the person that you're in a

1071
00:58:43,480 --> 00:58:46,040
Speaker 1: folly ado with, and which ones can't you talk about?

1072
00:58:46,640 --> 00:58:50,840
Speaker 1: And pretty personally, that's where I think I justify saying

1073
00:58:50,840 --> 00:58:53,400
Speaker 1: these things. And you know, before I published it, I

1074
00:58:53,520 --> 00:58:57,240
Speaker 1: showed typeescripts to some of the people that Jane had trained,

1075
00:58:57,440 --> 00:59:00,960
Speaker 1: and I was, really, you can't imagine how nervous I

1076
00:59:01,080 --> 00:59:03,960
Speaker 1: was about this and writing about things that have been secrets. Everybody,

1077
00:59:03,960 --> 00:59:06,760
Speaker 1: I think feels the same way. But the shocker was

1078
00:59:06,800 --> 00:59:09,120
Speaker 1: that almost all of them said, oh, you needed to

1079
00:59:09,160 --> 00:59:11,480
Speaker 1: do this, and they would start telling me things about

1080
00:59:11,560 --> 00:59:14,280
Speaker 1: Jane that they know, things that they didn't understand and

1081
00:59:14,320 --> 00:59:16,440
Speaker 1: couldn't explain, and said, you need to talk about this.

1082
00:59:16,960 --> 00:59:19,280
Speaker 1: I do have one person who kind of trolls my

1083
00:59:19,720 --> 00:59:22,440
Speaker 1: social media accounts and says that I'm being a terrible person,

1084
00:59:22,440 --> 00:59:24,240
Speaker 1: but everybody else is sort of on board.

1085
00:59:24,960 --> 00:59:27,280
Speaker 2: Well there's always one. And I'm so glad you just

1086
00:59:27,280 --> 00:59:29,560
Speaker 2: said that about marriage, because that's how I see this

1087
00:59:29,640 --> 00:59:39,040
Speaker 2: story as well. Barrett's story is not only about his

1088
00:59:39,120 --> 00:59:43,680
Speaker 2: marriage to Jane, however, it's a story of another marriage too,

1089
00:59:44,600 --> 00:59:47,040
Speaker 2: Believe it or not. It's a happy story.

1090
00:59:49,880 --> 00:59:52,200
Speaker 1: I described Jane as being a medical student who came

1091
00:59:52,200 --> 00:59:54,600
Speaker 1: on to the hospital where I was. There were actually

1092
00:59:54,600 --> 00:59:58,080
Speaker 1: two medical students that arrived the same day. There were classmates,

1093
00:59:58,400 --> 01:00:00,880
Speaker 1: and as I said, I oversaw two teams, one that

1094
01:00:00,920 --> 01:00:02,920
Speaker 1: I ran myself and then one that was run by

1095
01:00:02,920 --> 01:00:05,600
Speaker 1: a junior residence who kind of technically reported to me,

1096
01:00:05,680 --> 01:00:08,280
Speaker 1: but not really. Jane was on the other team, the

1097
01:00:08,360 --> 01:00:11,760
Speaker 1: junior residence team. The student came onto my team. His

1098
01:00:11,880 --> 01:00:15,600
Speaker 1: name was Lynn. Was like the best medical student I'd

1099
01:00:15,600 --> 01:00:21,560
Speaker 1: ever had. She was really smart, incredibly hard worker, really

1100
01:00:21,560 --> 01:00:23,160
Speaker 1: fun to work with. It turned out that, you know,

1101
01:00:23,160 --> 01:00:25,520
Speaker 1: the students need to be on call every third night

1102
01:00:25,520 --> 01:00:28,280
Speaker 1: as well, and her schedule was such that she was

1103
01:00:28,320 --> 01:00:30,240
Speaker 1: on call the same nights I was. So we would

1104
01:00:30,280 --> 01:00:33,160
Speaker 1: work together and I would teach her stuff, and I'd

1105
01:00:33,160 --> 01:00:35,320
Speaker 1: help her with the patients that she was being assigned,

1106
01:00:35,520 --> 01:00:37,560
Speaker 1: and you know, stay at all hours and taking care

1107
01:00:37,560 --> 01:00:40,000
Speaker 1: of things. And she was great. She was funny, and

1108
01:00:40,080 --> 01:00:43,960
Speaker 1: she was very confident. And those rotations last a couple

1109
01:00:44,000 --> 01:00:45,840
Speaker 1: of months, and on the last night we were on

1110
01:00:45,920 --> 01:00:48,560
Speaker 1: call together, we'd had a particularly busy night, a lot

1111
01:00:48,600 --> 01:00:51,080
Speaker 1: of patients, a lot of sick patients being admitted. It

1112
01:00:51,120 --> 01:00:54,040
Speaker 1: was about four o'clock in the morning and we were

1113
01:00:54,080 --> 01:00:56,720
Speaker 1: sitting in the nursing station on one of our awards,

1114
01:00:57,120 --> 01:01:00,600
Speaker 1: writing up our admission notes and she stuck turned to

1115
01:01:00,640 --> 01:01:02,160
Speaker 1: me and Lynn said, listen, I need to talk to

1116
01:01:02,160 --> 01:01:04,960
Speaker 1: you about something. And I said, fine, what do you

1117
01:01:04,960 --> 01:01:06,240
Speaker 1: want to talk about She said, no, I can't talk

1118
01:01:06,240 --> 01:01:07,960
Speaker 1: to you about it here. Well, what do you want

1119
01:01:07,960 --> 01:01:10,960
Speaker 1: to do? It said, follow me. So that ward was

1120
01:01:11,000 --> 01:01:13,360
Speaker 1: a long, long halway with a window at the end.

1121
01:01:13,680 --> 01:01:16,640
Speaker 1: So we walked down to the window and it's completely black.

1122
01:01:16,680 --> 01:01:18,360
Speaker 1: You know, it's four o'clock in the morning, so patients

1123
01:01:18,400 --> 01:01:20,760
Speaker 1: were sleeping the lights off. So we sat in the

1124
01:01:20,800 --> 01:01:25,280
Speaker 1: window sill and Lynn turns to me and says, listen,

1125
01:01:25,320 --> 01:01:27,600
Speaker 1: I have to tell you something. Said fine. And she

1126
01:01:27,680 --> 01:01:30,880
Speaker 1: told me something that no woman had ever told me before,

1127
01:01:31,080 --> 01:01:33,360
Speaker 1: and no one has ever told me since. She said,

1128
01:01:33,680 --> 01:01:35,560
Speaker 1: I'm really attracted to you, and I wonder if we

1129
01:01:35,560 --> 01:01:39,560
Speaker 1: should do something about that. I was unbelievably flattered, and

1130
01:01:39,600 --> 01:01:41,800
Speaker 1: I said to her, oh, Limb, you know, I think

1131
01:01:41,840 --> 01:01:45,160
Speaker 1: you're amazing, But didn't you tell me that you're engaged

1132
01:01:45,240 --> 01:01:47,280
Speaker 1: to be married and your wedding has taken place in

1133
01:01:47,320 --> 01:01:51,400
Speaker 1: like two months, and she said yeah. I said, well,

1134
01:01:51,440 --> 01:01:53,120
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not going to get into the middle

1135
01:01:53,120 --> 01:01:55,479
Speaker 1: of that. You really to think about this, Plus, I've

1136
01:01:55,520 --> 01:01:59,480
Speaker 1: already asked out your classmate Jane. And to Lind's credit,

1137
01:02:00,240 --> 01:02:02,080
Speaker 1: she just kind of rolled with it and said, yeah, yeah,

1138
01:02:02,080 --> 01:02:05,120
Speaker 1: I suppose you're right, and things didn't get awkward. We

1139
01:02:05,120 --> 01:02:06,800
Speaker 1: spent the next three or four days as she finished

1140
01:02:06,880 --> 01:02:09,200
Speaker 1: up her rotation, it was absolutely fine. And then she

1141
01:02:09,320 --> 01:02:11,240
Speaker 1: went off and she got married, and I, you know,

1142
01:02:11,960 --> 01:02:15,280
Speaker 1: took out Jane. But that was an unusual event, and

1143
01:02:15,320 --> 01:02:18,480
Speaker 1: I would think about it over the next several decades.

1144
01:02:18,520 --> 01:02:21,200
Speaker 1: I have a friend who has sort of the quantitative

1145
01:02:21,200 --> 01:02:23,280
Speaker 1: turn of mind that I told this story too. Why

1146
01:02:23,440 --> 01:02:26,240
Speaker 1: He said, oh, so how often did you take about it?

1147
01:02:26,320 --> 01:02:28,840
Speaker 1: Was it once a year? Was it four times a year?

1148
01:02:29,000 --> 01:02:31,240
Speaker 1: Was it ten times a year? And I told him,

1149
01:02:31,280 --> 01:02:33,080
Speaker 1: you know what he could do with his questions. But

1150
01:02:33,120 --> 01:02:35,360
Speaker 1: I did think about this every so often. So after

1151
01:02:35,440 --> 01:02:38,200
Speaker 1: Jane died, I was not interested in seeing anybody. I figured,

1152
01:02:38,240 --> 01:02:41,040
Speaker 1: you know, before I examined things really closely, I thought,

1153
01:02:41,040 --> 01:02:43,320
Speaker 1: you know, I'd had a long, wonderful marriage. Many people

1154
01:02:43,320 --> 01:02:45,160
Speaker 1: don't even get that. I don't want to try this again.

1155
01:02:45,520 --> 01:02:47,560
Speaker 1: The castro Ole ladies would come by, and I just

1156
01:02:47,640 --> 01:02:51,120
Speaker 1: was not interested. But then, almost a year after Jane died,

1157
01:02:51,160 --> 01:02:55,120
Speaker 1: I get this email and it's from Lynn, and my

1158
01:02:55,280 --> 01:02:58,000
Speaker 1: pulse races a little bit, and she says something like

1159
01:02:58,280 --> 01:03:00,520
Speaker 1: I must be living under a rock us heard that

1160
01:03:00,600 --> 01:03:02,840
Speaker 1: Jane died. I wanted to let you know sorry I am,

1161
01:03:03,160 --> 01:03:05,919
Speaker 1: and that I have lovely memories of thirty years ago

1162
01:03:06,000 --> 01:03:09,080
Speaker 1: when I was a medical student. And so I wrote

1163
01:03:09,080 --> 01:03:11,200
Speaker 1: back and said, this is a lovely thing that you've said.

1164
01:03:11,280 --> 01:03:13,760
Speaker 1: I also have lovely memories of that time, and thank

1165
01:03:13,760 --> 01:03:17,720
Speaker 1: you so much for writing. And Lynn wrote back once

1166
01:03:17,760 --> 01:03:20,840
Speaker 1: more and said, listen, I'm working in New Jersey, right

1167
01:03:20,880 --> 01:03:23,280
Speaker 1: across the George Washington Bridge forever in New York. You know,

1168
01:03:23,360 --> 01:03:25,960
Speaker 1: just let me know we can have coffee or a

1169
01:03:26,000 --> 01:03:27,840
Speaker 1: meal sometime. And I wrote back and said, yeah, I

1170
01:03:27,840 --> 01:03:29,320
Speaker 1: would love to do that. I can tell you about

1171
01:03:29,360 --> 01:03:31,480
Speaker 1: the most amazing woman who ever lived.

1172
01:03:35,480 --> 01:03:37,960
Speaker 2: Barrett doesn't really have any intention of meeting Lynn for

1173
01:03:38,000 --> 01:03:41,200
Speaker 2: coffee or a meal. First of all, he's not interested

1174
01:03:41,240 --> 01:03:45,400
Speaker 2: in rekindling some long ago spark. Second, he's pretty sure

1175
01:03:45,440 --> 01:03:48,360
Speaker 2: she's still married. But then a close friend from their

1176
01:03:48,400 --> 01:03:51,440
Speaker 2: early days in medicine. Visits Dana Farber to give a talk,

1177
01:03:51,920 --> 01:03:55,480
Speaker 2: and it turns out that she's Lynn's best friend. She

1178
01:03:55,560 --> 01:03:58,720
Speaker 2: proceeds to tell Barrett that Lynn's marriage is on the rocks.

1179
01:03:59,240 --> 01:04:01,720
Speaker 2: Barrett responds that he doesn't care. He's not going to

1180
01:04:01,720 --> 01:04:04,680
Speaker 2: get into the middle of this. But then when he

1181
01:04:04,720 --> 01:04:07,760
Speaker 2: gets home that night, he writes to Lynn. He tells

1182
01:04:07,800 --> 01:04:10,160
Speaker 2: her he's going to be visiting New York the following week.

1183
01:04:10,800 --> 01:04:13,720
Speaker 2: Maybe they could have lunch. He picks a restaurant on

1184
01:04:13,720 --> 01:04:16,840
Speaker 2: the Upper West Side and in walks Lynn, looking just

1185
01:04:16,920 --> 01:04:20,080
Speaker 2: as he remembered her, in his words, gorgeous.

1186
01:04:23,240 --> 01:04:25,040
Speaker 1: So we go inside and we talk. She tells me

1187
01:04:25,080 --> 01:04:27,320
Speaker 1: about her husband soon to be ex husband, as it

1188
01:04:27,360 --> 01:04:30,320
Speaker 1: turns out, and I tell her stuff about Jane that

1189
01:04:30,360 --> 01:04:32,840
Speaker 1: I hadn't told anybody else. I really hadn't talked to

1190
01:04:32,880 --> 01:04:35,920
Speaker 1: anybody about Jane's secrets and what it was like to

1191
01:04:35,920 --> 01:04:39,360
Speaker 1: take care of her. But I told Lynn, and things

1192
01:04:39,440 --> 01:04:41,480
Speaker 1: just moved very quickly, and within a year she had

1193
01:04:41,520 --> 01:04:43,760
Speaker 1: moved up to Boston to live with me. A couple

1194
01:04:43,760 --> 01:04:45,440
Speaker 1: months after that or about a year after that, we

1195
01:04:45,440 --> 01:04:48,720
Speaker 1: got married. And so now I am happily married to Lynn.

1196
01:04:49,600 --> 01:04:53,600
Speaker 1: She has three sons who I love dearly. She has

1197
01:04:53,920 --> 01:04:57,040
Speaker 1: two dogs who are part of the menagerie, and my

1198
01:04:57,920 --> 01:05:02,480
Speaker 1: daughter adores her and my grandkids adore her. So I

1199
01:05:02,480 --> 01:05:04,440
Speaker 1: think you know. The way I've described this sometimes is

1200
01:05:04,480 --> 01:05:07,640
Speaker 1: I've learned a lot about secrets. I've learned a lot

1201
01:05:07,680 --> 01:05:10,640
Speaker 1: about misery. I've learned a lot about marriage and secrets

1202
01:05:10,640 --> 01:05:13,280
Speaker 1: and marriage. But as it turns out, I've also learned

1203
01:05:13,280 --> 01:05:16,200
Speaker 1: about redemption. My life has sort of been redeemed by

1204
01:05:16,880 --> 01:05:19,200
Speaker 1: this relationship with Lynn. We've now been married for almost

1205
01:05:19,200 --> 01:05:20,800
Speaker 1: ten years. It's really something.

1206
01:05:26,840 --> 01:05:31,280
Speaker 2: Here's Barrett reading a final passage from his wrenching, searingly

1207
01:05:31,400 --> 01:05:32,960
Speaker 2: self searching memoir.

1208
01:05:34,760 --> 01:05:36,520
Speaker 1: It was no better feeling in the world than being

1209
01:05:36,520 --> 01:05:40,160
Speaker 1: in James's good graces. Her formidable intelligence and finally, hone

1210
01:05:40,200 --> 01:05:43,919
Speaker 1: taste combined to make her approval something special. A nod

1211
01:05:43,960 --> 01:05:46,600
Speaker 1: made you feel like a million bucks, and for exactly

1212
01:05:46,600 --> 01:05:50,560
Speaker 1: the same reasons where disfavor was crushing. This was true

1213
01:05:50,560 --> 01:05:53,320
Speaker 1: for anyone who interacted with Jing, but of course I

1214
01:05:53,360 --> 01:05:56,240
Speaker 1: felt it much more intensely because love was added to

1215
01:05:56,240 --> 01:06:00,000
Speaker 1: the mix. I crossed Jing west Or twice in our marriage,

1216
01:06:00,080 --> 01:06:03,640
Speaker 1: and her response had been to withdraw not just her affection,

1217
01:06:03,800 --> 01:06:08,280
Speaker 1: but everything. Being frozen out felt like the worst punishment imaginable.

1218
01:06:08,480 --> 01:06:11,520
Speaker 1: I would respond with a desperate scramble to find anything

1219
01:06:11,520 --> 01:06:14,160
Speaker 1: that might restore me to her favor, including in this case,

1220
01:06:14,560 --> 01:06:18,680
Speaker 1: I promise not to do anything about her breast cancer. Now,

1221
01:06:18,720 --> 01:06:22,040
Speaker 1: I felt deeply ashamed of my inaction. Fear of Jane's

1222
01:06:22,040 --> 01:06:26,520
Speaker 1: displeasure was an absurd excuse. I asked myself, what kind

1223
01:06:26,520 --> 01:06:30,160
Speaker 1: of husband could stand by idly for four years while

1224
01:06:30,160 --> 01:06:33,840
Speaker 1: his wife's breast cancer grew. I'm still asking that question.

1225
01:06:44,360 --> 01:06:48,440
Speaker 2: Family Secret is a production of iHeartRadio. Molly's Acur is

1226
01:06:48,440 --> 01:06:51,640
Speaker 2: the story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer.

1227
01:06:52,880 --> 01:06:54,880
Speaker 2: If you have a family secret you'd like to share,

1228
01:06:55,280 --> 01:06:57,720
Speaker 2: please leave us a voicemail and your story could appear

1229
01:06:57,720 --> 01:07:01,160
Speaker 2: on an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight eight

1230
01:07:01,160 --> 01:07:05,360
Speaker 2: eight Secret zero. That's the number zero. You can also

1231
01:07:05,440 --> 01:07:10,280
Speaker 2: find me on Instagram at Danny Ryder and if you'd

1232
01:07:10,320 --> 01:07:12,800
Speaker 2: like to know more about the story that inspired this podcast,

1233
01:07:13,200 --> 01:07:15,080
Speaker 2: check out my memoir Inheritance.

1234
01:07:37,240 --> 01:07:41,480
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

1235
01:07:41,560 --> 01:07:43,640
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.