Viva Las Vegas – Entry 8 in the story of my sister and me

“Oh, well, never get yourself in a position where they can force your hand – unless you are holding all the aces, in which case, you should be calling the shots. That’s card-talk.” Pat Loehmer

1997

The most uncharacteristic thing that my sister Pat ever proposed was that we go to Las Vegas. She hated big cities, hated commercialism, hated crowds, was not fond of shopping or gambling or watching people do stupid things. Where did she get the idea that we should go to Las Vegas? Because she had heard that Las Vegas has fantastic and inexpensive buffets, and her husband Jeff lived for a good cheap buffet.

So we booked flights for May 1997. My husband Himey had been to Vegas many times before I met him, and he would be our travel-guide. In addition to us two couples, Jeff’s daughter from his first marriage, Amy, came along.

We rented a car one day and drove to Hoover Dam, because, well, everyone goes to see the Dam their first time to Las Vegas. One night we all took the bus down to Fremont Street for the light display in the gigantic neon-light canopy. Another night, we went to King Arthur’s Tournament, which involved watching the joust while eating Cornish hen, at the Excalibur. The next day, Pat and I watched the World-Famous Lipizzaner Stallions in the same arena. I think while we were there, Himey took Amy on some death-defying ride that scared her silly.

We had a good time. We wandered from one end of The Strip to the other. We ate at as many buffets as we could. We laughed until we made ourselves sick.

Unfortunately, the good times were always overshadowed by the bad in Pat’s battle with cancer. That fall, more chemo, more radiation, and several more surgeries followed. Cancer cells wound their way into the bones of her back, causing excruciating pain. Back surgery didn’t offer much relief, and she would continue wearing a plastic body cast during her waking hours.

 As her body fought the onslaught, it was easy to wonder which was worse – the cancer or the treatment. Nausea dogged her days and nights. She got to the point where she couldn’t tolerate even Jello.

We didn’t talk about the future and what it might hold. She refused to give up so she refused to talk about the what-ifs. What if this chemo doesn’t work? What if the doctors down at the University can’t offer anything more than the oncologist back home? What if the experimental treatment makes you even sicker?

The only concession she would offer was that if nothing else, maybe someone else would benefit from what the doctors learned from her.