Life, on the Line by Grant Achatz (book club reads .txt) 📕

sorry to report that Grant has been diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma of the tongue.

For the last few weeks, and going back even further, his tongue has been bothering him. He went to a dentist a while back and was told it was a result of biting or grinding against his teeth at night while he was sleeping. The pain progressed last week to the point that he could not eat. He returned to a dentist, then the emergency room, and finally, to an oral surgeon last Monday who took a biopsy. Unfortunately, the biopsy came back positive on Friday.

At this point we do not know if the cancer has metastasized beyond the point of the tumor. He has an appointment tomorrow with a specialist and will certainly be getting more tests and eventually treatment.

Right now, the primary concern, by a large measure, is Grant’s treatment and recovery from this disease. However, we do not at this point want to alert the press, so please keep this news as private as possible. Once we have a firm diagnosis we will plan a course of action for Alinea and for Grant professionally.

I know that this is going to be a complete shock to you all as it was to me, and of course to Grant. He knows that he has our full support, and if any of you have any questions or have personal experience with someone who has had treatment for cancer in the head or neck, please contact me.

Regards,

Nick

CHAPTER 22

The ENT snaked a camera down my throat. Nick looked up at the video screen above me and said something about my profound ability to deep throat. He was trying to relieve the tension, but this wasn’t the tense part. As fast as it was in, it was out again, and the doctor told me that my voice box looked clear. He examined my tongue and my neck with his hands, then asked me to wait in his office across the hall. Nick and I went in there, found two seats next to each other, and looked at one another.

“Seems okay,” Nick said.

“Yeah. Good that my voice box was clean. What do you think they’ll do?”

We could hear the nurses shuffling around outside, asking some other appointments if they could wait a bit longer. It was a tiny room, barely big enough for three or four people, and it had the generic feeling of a doctor’s office that was seldom used—an office supply desk tucked in a corner, a couple of posters on the wall detailing a cutaway of the head and neck, uncomfortable seats. We sat there waiting. And waiting. We probably waited for about twenty minutes, although it felt like a very long twenty minutes. And the room was so small . . . too small for even just the two of us. The whole time we could hear them clearing through other patients and gathering up a couple of interns. Finally, the door opened and the doctor entered with two interns who barely looked old enough to drive. I noticed that they wouldn’t look me in the eye.

I feigned a smile.

The doctor had to steady himself before he spoke. Not good, I thought. Then he spoke quietly. “You know already that you have cancer. I’m sorry to tell you that it’s a late stage, and that it’s probably metastasized into your lymph nodes—certainly, at least, on your left side. It covers most of your tongue—or most of the visible part of your tongue. It may have bisected the midline, which I can’t tell without an . . .”

At that point his voice drifted out. I understood what he was saying and didn’t need to hear more. My expression didn’t change, but I began to sweat and feel cold. I rejoined the conversation when Nick asked a question about treatment. I heard something about replacing my tongue with a muscle from my arm, and asked quickly, “Will I be able to taste?”

“No. It will not be a tongue, it will be a muscle that with therapy will allow you some limited speech and perhaps the ability to swallow and eat.”

I was gone again. I steeled my chin by biting hard. And then Nick spoke: “Doctor, I don’t think we’re going to accomplish all of that today . . . perhaps it’s best that we leave now.”

The doctor protested, “Sir, this is very serious and I think . . .” Nick interrupted and looked at me. “I understand how serious this is, Doctor, and we’ll do what we need to do—on another day.” With this the doctor wrote some names on a piece of paper, gave me a prescription for serious painkillers, and we left his office.

It was a nice summer day, and we did exactly what needed to be done at that point: We headed across the street, at 11:30 A.M., to a Mexican dive bar and ordered a pitcher of strong margaritas.

We had to tell the staff at Alinea what was going on. A few people knew that Chef was not well—anyone could see that. But suddenly he was missing work at odd hours, and then he flew to New York with no notice. This was highly unusual, and everyone could tell that something was up. Some people might have thought that we were planning to open out there, because when I asked Joe to call an all-staff meeting for 3:00 P.M. in the upstairs dining room—“the 20’s”—there was, at first, an air of excitement.

I pulled Joe aside. “Grant is sick.”

“Yeah. I figured that; he doesn’t look well at all,” Joe said calmly, as usual. “Really sick?”

“Joe, I don’t want to tell anyone else right now because I think it’s important that it comes from Grant himself, but he’s spending the day tomorrow at Sloan-Kettering. He has stage-four cancer in his tongue, and it’s spread to his lymph system.”

Joe looked at me with only a slight giveaway of the horror of it all.