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X OCTO- MONTH library at www . ausdoc . com . au / therapy-update

2022

BER

In a spiritual realm , his act of kindness saved him .

Dr Farhan Imran Haematology – oncology physician in New York , US .

Your mind shuts down for a few minutes . No matter what the doctor is saying , the words do not register . It ’ s like in the movies . The only difference is that , in the movies , the scene passes , and there is a happy ending .

Not in real life . The scene has just begun , and the ending could very well be anything but happy .

Such was Rick ’ s state of mind when he heard for the first time that the reason he could not get any relief from his constipation , no matter what he tried , was that there was a golf ball – sized tumour sitting in his colon .

Having just entered his eighth decade , he had led an otherwise happy and fulfilling life as a high school biology teacher in New York State . He was a simple , kind man with the neat and scholarly appearance that you would expect from a teacher .

To Rick , his surgeon was like an angel sent by God . It seemed nothing less than a miracle when she told him she had successfully removed the giant tumour .

However , the cancer had spread to a number of surrounding lymph nodes . There was a high chance of the cancer coming back in the next few months if he did not go through brutal chemotherapy .

For that , he had to see a medical oncologist , and this is when I first met Rick .

“ You will go through three months of chemotherapy . It will be hard , but you should be able to get through it ,” I explained to him .

“ Will that make sure the cancer will not come back ?” he asked .

“ There are no promises , unfortunately , but we will get scans of your body every few months for the next five years to look for any signs of the cancer coming back .”

Disappointed at the lack of a guarantee , he looked into my eyes trying to find hope , only to find my attempt at a poker face .

He finished chemotherapy without any major side effects , and we started obtaining scans every few

months . Scan after scan showed no sign of cancer .

After discussing the scan results , I would often talk to Rick and his wife about their lives , and we would share stories of the past few months since the previous office visit .

An abandoned egg

This is when , for the first time , I

heard about Lucky the duck .

A few days after his cancer operation , Rick was recovering at home . He was walking around the house but not yet going out or lifting anything heavy . As he stood in his living room , he looked outside and saw the backyard covered entirely with snow .

The swimming pool was covered to protect it from the harsh winter . His eyes suddenly caught on a small round object sitting on top of the swimming pool cover . His curiosity compelled him to walk outside carefully to see what it was .

He was at risk of falling on the ice , but despite his wife ’ s warnings , he went anyway . As he got closer , he saw that it was actually an egg .

As a biology teacher , Rick was used to handling eggs . He would incubate them as biology projects to teach students about the life cycles of birds .

He had no way of knowing whether this particular egg was fertilised . It may have been frozen through , but he brought it inside anyway .

He took it down to the basement , where he had an incubator that he ’ d used in the classroom . He placed the egg near the heating rod , adjusting it to the exact temperature required for

the egg to hatch — 38.3 ° C — as he had taught his students for decades .

Every day , he came to the basement to check on the egg , not knowing whether it would hatch or not . Each day , Rick turned the egg just as the mother would in the nest . When nothing happened for a couple of weeks , he could have just picked it up and thrown it in the bin , but something told him to keep watching .

A faint chirping

On the 26th day , when he walked into

the basement , he heard faint chirping .

Sitting in the midst of the cracked eggshells was a small baby duck .

It was so tiny that it could barely walk and open its eyes . Rick smiled from “ cuteness overload ”. He named the duckling “ Lucky ”.

Not having grown up in a pet-loving home myself , I don ’ t know a lot about animals and the nuances of taking care of them . “ Is a duck a usual animal to keep as a pet ?” I asked Rick .

“ No , it ’ s not . But there ’ s nothing stopping you from giving a duckling a loving home if you would like to ,” he quipped . “ But I have to be honest , I don ’ t really want any animal control authorities to find out , so please keep this story to yourself . I don ’ t know what the rules and laws are . I don ’ t want to lose Lucky .”

So there Lucky was , having found a loving home in an upscale town in the westernmost region of New York ,

under the care of two loving parents .

Lucky ate what pet birds usually eat : Rice Krispies , cereal , worms . He liked to sleep just about anywhere in the house but usually in a bed made of an old cardboard box . He would often sit in one of Rick ’ s shoes to greet him when he arrived home from the grocery store .

Lucky loved to stay indoors and be warm most of the year . He became

I thought to myself : ‘ Was Rick lucky for Lucky , or was Lucky lucky for Rick ?’

one of the family , featured in all the Christmas photos . His birthday , aptly named “ hatch day ”, was celebrated each year . Rick thought of Lucky as a therapy duck .

The only thing Mrs Rick was not thrilled about was the fact that Lucky could not be potty-trained , so the entire house needed to be constantly cleaned . Still , she preferred to look on the bright side , telling me this was how she got her daily exercise .

Living with uncertainty

Somehow , it appeared that Rick ’ s

journey of going through cancer ran in parallel to Lucky ’ s life . Lucky was born and adopted , essentially given a new life at around the same time Rick ’ s oncology team declared him cancer free .

However , after a couple of years , I had to break the bad news to him : “ Your scan is showing a nodule on your lung . It could either be cancerous or not , but we cannot find out

because it is too small to stick a needle into it for a biopsy . The only thing we can do is repeat the scans every three months and see if it grows or disappears . If it grows , we are in trouble ; if it goes away , we are all set .”

“ Do you know how hard it is to live with this kind of uncertainty , Doc ?” he said .

“ I wish I could help with that ,” I replied . “ But I can ’ t . Nobody can .” Those few months were very difficult for Rick . During that time , Lucky also went through a life-threatening incident .

Lucky disappears

Rick used to let Lucky venture outdoors

each day . Lucky would fly away and always come back in an hour or so . One morning , Lucky did not return . Three hours passed , then four , then six .

The anticipation increased . Rick ’ s mind churned through hundreds of scenarios .

Then his neighbour called . He had found Lucky in his yard , lying feebly in bushes under a tree . Several of his feathers were chewed out , and there was a sizable wound on his side .

Rick guessed that his neighbour ’ s dog had bitten Lucky , and while the duck escaped for his life , he got stuck in the bushes .

Rick brought Lucky home and nursed him over the next few weeks . Lucky did not quack or fly for about a month . Some of his feathers grew back , and the wound healed . But Lucky never again left the front yard whenever he was let out .

Still , everyone was relieved . He had survived .

Survival

Rick had a similar kind of relief when I told him at a visit that his lung nodule had disappeared on a follow-up scan .

At the end of five years of follow-up , I told Rick : “ This far out , the chances of your cancer coming back are now down to a point that you don ’ t need to see me anymore .”

Happy and relieved , he invited me to his house to meet Lucky . The duck was even more loving and beautiful than what I had imagined over the years .

As I was leaving the house , looking at Rick , cured of his cancer , and Lucky , having endured a near life-ending incident , I asked : “ Why did you name him Lucky ?”

He responded : “ Because it was his good luck that I found his egg before it was destroyed .”

I thought to myself : “ Was Rick lucky for Lucky , or was Lucky lucky for Rick ?”

Maybe Rick was the one who was fortunate to have survived the cancer and , in some spiritual realm , this was all because of his act of kindness towards Lucky .