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but they come with different accents and in a different setting. Sloan Kettering is a cancer treatment center exclusively, so I always wonder as I pass patients, What’s going on in
their
bodies?
    Is that cancer curable or just treatable?
    Memorial Sloan Kettering is on the Upper East Sideof New York, a few blocks from the East River, and it is an urban intersection of modern medicine and technology, all directed at the treatment of cancer in its many forms. Walking the corridors of MSK, as Sloan is known to regulars, from one test to another, can be an emotional experience. A young mother, leaning over a gurney, whispering to a bald child, while Dad sits stoically nearby. I thought of our grandchildren and how devastating it would be to have one of them, bald and frightened, on that gurney. The emotional and financial turmoil, the complete immersion of the family in the struggle to find relief, the utter unfairness of it all, adds up to a price no one should have to pay.
    The MSK staff reflects the immigrant roots of New York. A Haitian technician takes my blood. My pain specialist is from India. A native of the Dominican Republic checks my blood pressure and other vital signs. An Argentine MD and her South Korean—American associate survey my veins for a possible stem cell harvest, the extraction of healthy blood to replace the bad cells. An Iranian American physician, trained originally in Tehran, removes some stitches. As the Argentina-born physician put it, “New York is a melting pot; Sloan Kettering is a puree.”
    Quickly I was into the attack on those renegade plasma cells with the daily drug cocktail.
    It is a complex procedure, what to take when, and Meredith instantly became my accountant, enforcer, and quick-study expert, taking detailed notes as the physicians worked their way through the daily routine of a multiple myeloma patient. Dr. Landau outlined her game plan: a twice-daily diet of Revlimid as the primary chemo drug, bone strengtheners, testosterone supplements, calcium, vitamins, and, she said, “We’ll be looking at a stem cell transplant sometime around December. You’ll lose your hair. Is that a problem?” No, but others had warned me that stem cell transplants can be arduous because they require a protracted hospital and home stay in germ-free conditions.
    A friend about the same age was in his fifth year of multiple myeloma drug maintenance and doing well on drugs alone. He elected to pass on a stem cell transplant, explaining that at our age it is a serious interruption when we don’t have an excess of days and months to give up. When I shared his story with Dr. Gertz at Mayo he was dismissive, saying there are no clinical trials demonstrating that drugs are equal to the stem cell procedure, adding that one personal experience is not an acceptable standard.
    Another MM patient, a medical school professor about our age, elected to undergo the transplant and for him it worked surprisingly well. He was hospitalized forten days and shortly thereafter resumed a robust lifestyle.
    These are the dilemmas for cancer patients. Who and what to believe? A particular treatment is not foolproof, or, as many medical experts remind us, it is not math, with a fixed and certain outcome.
    Physically, I had almost no trouble with chemo side effects. Fatigue, yes, but an extra nap would neutralize that and I didn’t fight the impulse to crash for a half hour midday. Somewhere along the way I read an article about chemo brain, the cerebral effect of chemo treatments. Ah, I thought, that’s why my spelling skills aren’t consistently accessible and my fact-retrieval synapses aren’t firing in reliable fashion. I’d encounter a long-familiar word and just stare at my misspelling, unable to quickly put it in order (no, it wasn’t the onset of dementia). Spell-check became a close companion. Recalling from memory a name or a title was another long reach, and when I offered “chemo brain” as an excuse my