Dr. Lisa Rutstein. M-fucking-D. I first met this brilliant Maine oncologist back in March of 2020 after an ER doctor had discovered a cyst in my pancreas due to my drinking a fifth of vodka a day for three years straight. My mother accompanied me on the drive down to Dr. Rutstein’s office located at Central Maine Medical Center, and her presence was stressing me out. Usually I drank as I drove—I always had a plastic water bottle filled 3/4 of the way with vodka and a bottle of ginger ale—but with my mother in the car I kept both knuckles on the wheel and counted down the minutes until I could run into the doctor’s office bathroom and drink the booze I had stashed in my purse. Vodka always reeked of desperation to me.
The wait in the room was long, and I had already made two trips to the bathroom for a few drinks when Dr. Rutstein finally entered. She was in her fifties, tall for a woman, slim, and had thick orange-yellow and wild hair that she refused to tame. She had blue eyes and a soft voice that irritated the hell out of me. She just seemed too calm. But that was because she saw the worst kind of shit. She dealt with cancer for christ’s sake. She should have been broken. But she wasn’t. She was definitely cut out for this job and for people like me.
“You aren’t like my other patients,” she said softly when she sat down on the standard doctor’s stool, and it deflated under her weight. Whoosh, it quietly exhaled, as I recalled playing on those stools as a child, waiting for a doctor to enter the room. Then, my mom would repeatedly tell me to cut it out. Now, I had an odd sensation that Dr. Rutstein was about to demand the same thing from me.
“You’re not dying from cancer, but you are dying,” she went on. “So let me ask you. Do. You. Want. To. Die?” Before I could answer, she said, “I ask this of my other patients all the time. Do you want to die? Am I wasting my time here? Do you want to die?”
Jesus fucking christ, I thought. What a first impression. Then, I thought, I need a fucking drink.
My cheeks flushed even redder on top of the rosacea I had acquired from drinking so much at such an early age.
Her question will forever stick with—and haunt—me. Do you want to die? At first, I thought this was such a stupid question. Who the fuck wants to die? But the way she said it made me pause. Her directness stopped the prepared defense I had written in my head for any doctor who questioned my drinking, and she knew that I realized that she had me right where she wanted me. She was the first person thus far to ever hold me accountable for my drinking.
Tears suddenly started welling up in my eyes.
“Um. No. I mean, I don’t know,” I finally said—the last part being the truth.
“I see,” Dr. Rutstein replied. At the hint of a sob in my voice, my mother let out a sad sigh. She stayed silent next to me, and I instantly hated her for that. Say something! I screamed at her inside my head. Save me like you always do!
“Well, this cyst needs to come out. And I’m not doing it while you’re still drinking. You will have to affectively be sober for a few months in order for me to safely remove it. With your level of addiction, and the fact that your parents drink, you will probably have to go to a sober living facility for three or more months…prior to surgery.”
“Three months!” I cried. “I would have to quit my job! I’d be blacklisted! And I can’t afford three months of my life!”
“Then it all comes back to my question…do you want to die?” She responded wryly, unmoved by my self-pity.
My mom reached for my hand, and I pushed her away.
“You have people here who want to help you,” Dr. Rutstein observed.
I nodded but was already shutting her out. Fuck you, I thought.
***
We addicts have a train of thought, and if you have lived it then you know. As addicts, we are not stupid; we tend to be extremely intelligent individuals. When we abuse, we are conniving, calculative, and manipulative. We are also very in tune with others and ourselves. We’re always one step ahead. I knew I was going to die if I kept this up. I didn’t need a fucking doctor to tell me that I was going to die if nothing changed. I knew that! I probably knew it before anyone else! But, and this is key here, I told myself I didn’t care. Of course, knowing that I was slowly killing myself was scaring the shit out of me every single second of my life. Every night I went to bed I didn’t know if I would wake up in the morning. Living as an addict is one of the scariest ways to live and we dwell in denial to cope. That’s the other misconception the “others” have about “us.” They believe that either we don’t see the self-destruction, or that we don’t care. And both are the farthest from the truth. Of course, it’s so easy for a doctor or a friend or whoever to say, “Well…if you know this is killing you, why don’t you just stop?” Because addiction is not just a mentality: it is a physical attribute. If you have the genetics and psychological tendencies to be an addict, once you’re hooked, your body is too. During my early twenties I tried to quit cold turkey twice without any medical assistance. Both times I had a seizure and was rendered unconscious. And almost every time that I would go to the hospital for help with withdrawals, I was either harassed, abused, or taunted by the staff. One time an ER doctor even reported me to the State. As an addict, it is not easy to receive help. All these factors play a crucial role in the disease—not “choice”—that is addiction.
***
I cried a lot in Rutstein’s little room and hated myself for it. I was going to die, and this doctor knew it. And she wouldn’t just let me get the cyst out and keep drinking. She was going to make me work for it. Well, screw her then, I thought after leaving the appointment. I ended up telling her I was going to look into the sober living facilities she recommended and would let her know what I decided. I never ended up reaching out to her office.
A week later I entered St. Mary’s detox program for the fourth and last time. It was at the very end of February 2020 when Covid was about to shut down the state of Maine. After four days, the detox staff released me, as always with the naïve hope that this time would be different. I could do it. I didn’t believe the bull shit this time around. When I was discharged, I found—let’s not kid ourselves—I searched for the half-filled water bottle that didn’t hold water that I knew I saved on purpose, tucked away underneath the passenger seat. I finished it off on my drive home and told myself that after it was gone, I was done. I drove straight to my parents’ house and, slightly tipsy, I greeted my mother with a hug. Within minutes I told her I was out of cigarettes and drove to the nearest store and bought a fifth of vodka, again using denial and telling myself at least it was “better” than a half-gallon.
Before I knew it, I was drinking a fifth a day again. Three months later, on June 3rd, I was experiencing the same symptoms—severe back pain from pancreatitis and the cyst. The ER doctor at CMMC told me the cyst had grown and needed to be removed as soon as possible. During the procedure, however, a major artery was nicked, and I bled out twice on the table. After the botched surgery and everything that happened afterward, I learned that Dr. Rutstein hadn’t been the operating surgeon. Actually, she had refused to perform it when she found out I hadn’t gone to a rehab facility. She had stuck to her morals and ethics.
Every morning that I can remember for those next six weeks, Dr. Rutstein visited with two women whom I started calling her minions: Clancy Erikson and Chris (Christina) Owens.
Before 8:00 am, Dr. Rutstein would glide into my room—briefly knocking on the door—with her tall legs and her poufy hair that bounced in the breeze. She always stood at the foot of my bed and demanded attention. On the mornings when I actually knew what the hell was going on, I would hear her voice down the halls heading towards my room. I would then close my eyes and pretend to be asleep. She always knew this but would softly tell me to “wake up.” Even after surviving coding twice, she was still holding me accountable.
Most mornings she came in to simply look at the four tubes that were protruding from my stomach (one feeding and three draining). The drainage tubes were literally that—draining crap from my pancreas in long plastic tubes that emptied out into a drainage bulb. Every morning Clancy would grab the tube and squeeze the excess liquid that was in the line that didn’t reach the bulb. If she wasn’t careful or was going too fast, she would pull the actual tube instead of squeezing it and it would be tugged from my insides
One morning, a week before I was discharged, Rutstein told me I would be leaving soon, but that her recommendation was to live in a rehabilitation facility for at least three months.
“But…why?” I asked. “I’ve been sober for a month here. I’m fine.”
“Exactly,” she said. “You’re here. And alcohol is out there. And more specifically, with your parents. I know they drink and if they continue with you living in the house, that is a reportable offense.”
Not realizing how rational her concern was at the time, I was stunned. I put up a fight and told her no way in hell was I going to be juggled from one facility to another. Fuck that. Aggravated, she finally left the room with Clancy chasing her tail. Chris, as always, stayed behind.
“Please don’t worry. You need to rest. She won’t report them. And she can’t force you to go to a facility once you’re strong enough to leave. She’s just extremely concerned about your sobriety. We all are.”
***
Dr. Rutstein never talked about my returning home again. One week and three days later—after a total of a little over six weeks in the hospital—I was discharged. My parents picked me up and stopped only once to buy me a can of ginger ale on the way home. It was the first time I had sipped it without alcohol out in the real world.
Beating the odds, I fucking did it. I managed to stay sober not through AA, not through my parents’ support (they kept drinking), and not through any god’s grace. I managed to stay sober because I had died twice and fought every fucking second to stay alive afterward. I knew that I’d rather be dead for real than to have to go through that again. And I knew I’d rather be sober than dead. The choice, then, not to drink was simple. Sometimes there really is a rock bottom, and it just works.
I saw Dr. Rutstein multiple times afterwards; I was hospitalized twice in the fall of 2020 for minor complications, and then I followed up with her on a regular basis. The first time I saw her after celebrating a year of sobriety, we were back in the same damn room we had met in.
“How’s our Bianca doing?” Her endearing words caught me off guard. She had never, ever, approached me with any form of compassion before. Clearly, my sobriety meant something to her.
She asked if I was still sober and I replied that yes, happily, I was.
“I am so proud of you,” she whispered.
“I am too,” I softly said back.
In the later stages of my recovery, I would always think of Dr. Rutstein when I saw my parents’ stash of liquor bottles plainly displayed on our cellar floor.
***
***
The ManifestStation publishes content on various social media platforms many have sworn off. We do so for one reason: our understanding of the power of words. Our content is about what it means to be human, to be flawed, to be empathetic. In refusing to silence our writers on any platform, we also refuse to give in to those who would create an echo chamber of division, derision, and hate. Continue to follow us where you feel most comfortable, and we will continue to put the writing we believe in into the world.
***
Our friends at Corporeal Writing are reinventing the writing workshop one body at a time.
Check out their current online labs, and tell them we sent you!
***
We are looking for readers with an hour or so a week to read non-fiction submissions.
Interested? Let us know!
***
Inaction is not an option,
Silence is not a response
Check out our Resources and Readings
