Since his wife's brain stopped functioning weeks ago, since she was
hooked to a ventilator and her cancer began spreading down to her
neck, to her back and to the lymph nodes under her arms, Jason
Torres said he's noticed relatively little physical change except
one: Her belly keeps growing.
"She's becoming more noticeably
pregnant," he said with quiet awe yesterday, sitting near the
marbled cafeteria at Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington.
It is the place where he has spent the better part of his days
lately in some emotional purgatory: grieving the loss of his
26-year-old wife, Susan Torres, who he believes is dead, "barring
divine intervention," and yet hoping still to save the 5-month-old
fetus she is carrying by keeping her body alive, at least for five
more weeks.
"It's a race against time whether the child will reach viability
. . . before the cancer spreads," said Torres, 26, of Arlington. "We
have a small hope that maybe. Maybe."
They were hoping for a girl.
For all anyone knew, Susan Torres was in perfect health when she
found out in February that she was pregnant, and the couple greeted
the news of a second child with the usual mixture of terror and joy.
Susan was found to have melanoma when she was 17 -- a malformed
freckle on her arm was removed -- but doctors then had given her the
all clear.
In late April, though, Torres said his wife began to complain of
feeling mildly ill with nausea and headaches that gradually
worsened. Torres saw her obstetrician and perhaps two other doctors,
her husband said, all of whom said she seemed fine. With the
symptoms persisting, Torres took his wife to the emergency room,
where doctors said she was simply dehydrated.
So they went home. It was early Saturday by then, May 7, and
Susan Torres went to sleep. Later on, she told her husband that she
wanted something greasy to eat. He made steak and cheese subs, and
propped her up in bed for dinner. She apologized for being so much
trouble.
"I said, 'Ah, that's all right,' " Jason Torres recalled. "And
that was the end of the conversation."
Moments later, his wife stopped breathing. Torres called 911 and
performed CPR until the ambulance came. At the hospital, doctors did
a CAT scan and told him that his wife had no brain function, that
she had a cancerous growth at the back of her head and that it had
metastasized and bled, causing pressure on her brain.
"That's when they said we wouldn't normally proceed at this
moment," Torres said, but because she's young and because she's
pregnant, the doctors said, "we'll try."
The surgery that night relieved some of the pressure; her body
seemed to stabilize. Three days later, doctors approached Jason
Torres with a choice. "In their dry way of speaking, they said the
event of the 7th was a fatal event" for Susan, he said, "and that we
could try to continue for 10 weeks and save the child, or just stop
now."
Torres conferred with Susan's parents, who had flown in from
Texas, and they agreed to keep Susan on a ventilator and provide
nutrition and hydration in the hope that the fetus might make it to
25 weeks -- about mid-July -- at which point the baby would have a
chance of surviving outside the womb.
According to a report several years ago by the University of
Connecticut Health Center, there have been 11 similar cases reported
in the United States since the late 1970s. Most were successful, the
report said, with pregnancies prolonged in brain-dead women 10 weeks
on average. Torres said he realizes that it's a long shot, but his
wife, a microbiologist with the National Institutes of Health, was a
strong-willed and competitive soul, and he is certain that she would
want it this way.
And so Susan Torres lies in a hospital bed in Arlington, both her
belly, and her cancer it seems, growing a little bit every day.
Although doctors at the hospital declined to comment on her
condition, Jason Torres said they have told him that the cancer has
not reached his wife's vital organs yet. But they told him that her
particular sort of cancer, melanoma, has the ability to penetrate
the placenta and attack the child. So if Susan makes it until July,
there will be another question: whether to deliver the baby
prematurely, with all the risks that entails, or try to keep going
longer and risk the baby getting cancer.
If the case brings to mind that of Terri Schiavo, Torres said
yesterday, there are really no similarities, because he and Susan's
family are in agreement over her treatment and because they have, as
best as they can, accepted that if it weren't for the baby, she
would be gone.
"I don't want to accept it," Jason Torres said, referring to his
wife's death, "but, yeah, I don't think it would be unethical to
stop [the ventilator] now. But given the chance to save the life of
the child, we've got to give it a try."
For now, Torres is on leave from his job in publishing, his days
spent shuffling insurance claim forms and shuttling between the
hospital and home, caring for his wife and for their 2-year-old son,
Peter, who, when he asks, is told that his mom is just asleep at the
hospital. Jason Torres sleeps there, too, most nights, at his wife's
side, realizing, he said, that there is only a limited time to sit
with her and hold her hand.
He speaks with some detachment about the baby but allows himself
to smile when he says that on the sonogram, the child seemed feisty.
He tries to remain realistic, yet sometimes allows himself to
consider names: His wife liked Cecilia Ann; he is leaning toward
Susan or Michelle, his wife's middle name.
There will be a huge bill, he knows, because health insurance
does not cover the full cost of her treatment. For about 110 to 130
days in the hospital, Torres figures his cost will be $300,000 to
$400,000, which is why he and his family decided to approach the
news media with what would otherwise have remained private.
The Torreses are Catholic, and there was an article several weeks
ago in the Arlington Catholic Herald, followed by one in Wednesday's
Washington Times and USA Today, and by yesterday afternoon, a
cluster of microphones and television cameras was waiting outside
the hospital as the story of Susan Torres began to spread across
cable news.
"I'm realistic about the problems," Jason Torres said, "that the
planets have to align for the child to survive. We have a small hope
that maybe we can pull something out of the ashes of this
situation."
Staff writer David Brown contributed to this
report.
