“Stop it. You’re driving me crazy, Seabury,” she said as the held hand stopped and the free fingers doubled their speed. The door finally opened.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Campbell, Mrs. Campbell. I trust the process this morning was quick.”
“Everything was fine, doctor. We’re just a bit anxious to get the results,” Ruth said.
“We’re you able to stop in our cafeteria for lunch? There are lots of great restaurants in the area, but I think our cafeteria serves the best food at a good price,” Blauw said as he looked at Seabury’s scans from the CT, MRI and PET.
“I had the soup… Navy bean… my son’s in the Navy, you know,” Seabury said with a great pride.
“Yes, that’s what Colonel Raines was telling me a couple of weeks ago. I’m sure he’s seen a lot of things during his career.”
Blauw looked at the images for several more minutes then closed the screens.
“Okay… let’s talk. The positron emission tomography, or PET scan as we like to call it, measures how much sugar is taken up and into the brain. Before the test, we injected Mr. Campbell with glucose, a diagnostic flourodeoxyglucose called FDG. It’s a short-lived radioactive form of sugar and it illuminates activity within the brain. What we see in the scans is very low activity in the front of your brain. In my opinion, we’re looking at FTD, frontotemporal dementia.”
“What the hell? First you talk about pets, and now you want to send flowers. Can you just speak American?” Seabury said with fierce irritation as the finger tapping tripled in speed.
“I’m sorry, but based on these scans and the psychometric tests we did a few weeks ago, I think you have AD, Alzheimer’s disease. The FDG-PET images are, unfortunately, rather conclusive. But I think you may have had these symptoms longer than you both realized. We may be moving from mild- to moderate-AD rather quickly.”
Ruth reached over and took both of Seabury’s hands and held them tightly.
“What can we do, Dr. Blauw? Are there pills he can take, or can we try herbs? One of my lady friends in Sunday school class started doing crossword puzzles and that seemed to help her some,” Ruth asked desperately grasping at straws.
“Yes, Mrs. Campbell, we should try everything. Let’s start taking over-the-counter Vitamin E supplements each day. Vitamin E is an antioxidant and it might protect some of the nerve cells in the brain from damage. We might be able to delay severe AD with a Mediterranean diet of fish, fruits, beans, high-fiber grains and olive oils. You need to avoid meats, cheese and sweets. I’d also recommend an increase to your exercise, two brisk walks every day.”
“Hell, I’d rather die!” Sea Bee yelled to the shock of both Ruth and Dr. Blauw. “Almost 50 years on a dairy farm, and you want me to give up bacon and cheese and hop on a treadmill? Why, just so I can live another four years?”
Blauw lowered his eyes and stayed silent as Seabury calmed down.
“We’ll also start you on some medications, Mr. Campbell. I’m going to start you with Donepezil, or maybe Aricept, and see if your system can handle it. We may go to Memantine in order to regulate the glutamate if we need to.”
“Dr. Blauw, will any of these pills cure Alzheimer’s?” Ruth asked.
“No, no I’m sorry, but currently there’s no cure for AD. We’re working on it, all over the world in fact, and we’ve had breakthroughs but no cure yet. I spend almost half of my time here doing research with animals, trying to find the next puzzle piece in the equation.”
“Are there any other options? Fish, beans, walks and pills, anything else?” Ruth asked.
“Well, there are some clinical studies.”
“What do you mean?” Ruth asked.
“It’s one of the last phases of the biomedical research process. A scientist has an idea and writes a grant to NIH. NIH awards money, and researchers, oftentimes at universities, conduct basic animal research. The discoveries are then acquired by pharmaceutical and biotech companies as intellectual property. Then they try to develop a medicine or a therapy that targets your disease and is also safe to take. If those applied animal studies are successful, then the Food and Drug Administration authorizes a limited clinical trial where patients with that disease take an experimental medicine, therapy or procedure. That’s a human clinical trial.”
“Well, I don’t think Seabury will be a human guinea pig,” Ruth said.
“Now wait a minute, Ruth, I like it. My son’s out there on the front lines of God-only-knows-where. The least I can do is get on the front lines of this damn thing,” Seabury said with a new sense of purpose. “When do I start?”
“Well, there are several trials we can choose from. I can make some calls and see which ones will take you. You’re not what we call ‘early-onset,’ so options are limited. I can call you in the next week, to discuss what’s out there.”
“Dr. Blauw, please just set it up with Colonel Raines. She understands all of this gobbledygook better than we do,” Ruth rendered as she stood up and reached for Seabury’s hand.
“I appreciate that, but due to doctor-patient confidentiality, I can only discuss this with immediate family members unless you provide a waiver.”
“Well, I’ll sign whatever you want.”
“Very well,” Blauw said as he wrote out a prescription for Aricept.
Ruth signed the waiver at the nurse station then pulled Sea Bee out of Exam Room #3 on her hand-leash.
FOB Lightning
Paktya Province, Afghanistan
US Army Captain “Sonny” Sanchez closed the door to the private dining room in the DFAC and then put a chain and padlock through the two metal door handles. Fourteen men sat around the four dining room tables, including Camp and Finn.
“Gentlemen, next time y’all call in Special Forces, please make sure you get here on time. We don’t like to wait,” Sanchez said to start the meeting.
“Sorry, captain, but we’re at the mercy of your Army’s ring routes. The birds get here when the birds get here,” Finn said with a little irritation.
“Once we got the order from General Ferguson, we drove 180 miles through the mountains and IEDs at night in the middle of March and made it here on time. I expect the same moving forward from both of you.”
“Captain, I presume you’re aware that Captain Campbell here is a Navy O-6 and a former SEAL?”
“I don’t care if he’s Santa Claus, and you’re his elf. This is my mission, and we go by my book and my clock. Clear?”
“Crystal!” Camp said with a reassuring smile. He liked Sanchez already.
“And no more ranks and honorifics. ‘Sanchez’ is good enough. We’re Special Forces Operation Detachment Alpha, based out of Kandahar for now, soon to be your best friends. Before we get started, I need to ask who else knows about this mission.”
“What mission?” Camp recited with a straight face.
“Let’s keep it that way. Campbell and Finn, any nicknames we should use?”
“Call me Camp.”
“Well, Finn is kinda short as is. Call me Billy if you need to.”
“Camp and Finn it is. Before we do the brief and work on the plan, just want you both to know that we muster in the truck pool at 0200. We’ll leave sometime after that. One assault pack each, bring your own food, medical and kit for at least seven days. We’ll restock later. We have extra gear that you’ll receive at the appropriate time. Questions?”
Neither Camp nor Finn flinched. It wasn’t their first rodeo.
“All of us read the SITREP ya’ll wrote for Command in Kabul with regard to your female IED and the intel gathered. Likewise, we have a copy of the video you saw at Command, and we’ve already begun to assess clothing, flags, weapons — including hi-res serial numbers — backgrounds and acoustics. We’ve also asked for an assist from Langley for video upload plot points. What about the Terp? Does she expect anything or assume anything is going to happen?”