Cancer, Of Course

Music’s vast sonic wonderworld allowed me to transport myself away from anything I didn’t want to remember, feel, or acknowledge. Concert repertoire from the European tradition and pop tunes ably traveled alongside the inner sounds of my pain. I created a surrogate voice that presented self-control to the outside world. Far safer to deflect my inner turmoil onto a full range of outer musical sounds – like the terror I recognized in Shostakovich’s music – than to give it voice from within my own body.

Using musical sounds as a form of emotional transaction to quell trauma’s frequencies within my psyche could not serve as a permanent strategy for self-censure, however. As I would eventually learn, prolonged denial exacts consequences. Bessel van der Kolk famously penned a book, The Body Keeps Score to addresses the intersection of brain, body, and mind in processing trauma. His words about the physical toll of what I pushed down were drowned out by my quests. Sobriety. Marriage. Gainful employment. Gigs. Graduate studies.

Other than migraines that preceded flashbacks, I never expected that a lifetime of suppressing the full extent of traumas I had sustained would undermine my physical health. For the sake of moving on, I continued a form of self-censure to honor Mother’s silence about her own traumatic past and the stalemate of her denial of the incest. I fortified my silence with ever more music, adding a layer of music scholarship as I pursued more graduate work in musicology

I counted myself fortunate to have been able to at least tell my mother the truth, even if she chose to push it back down for herself. It would be too much for a woman pushing seventy years old to unpack the traumas of her past. People of her generation had no use for counseling. She had no army of supportive allies commensurate with what I had gathered around me for healing.

We avoided all mention of the past – mine or hers – so that Dave and I could welcome Mom into our lives. That was the pact, which we held together for a while at least. The howling, dissonant frequencies stayed at the periphery of my inner landscape, promised a harmonious resolution through the restoration of our relationship.

Deceptive Cadences

Treating me as her prodigal daughter, Mother happily became a doting “Mom” showing interest in my life and career. We traveled home to visit her, and she in turn traveled to see us in Minnesota. My siblings seemed to go along with it, obeying the family code of being all in or not at all.

Mother was in the audience to hear me perform Benjamin Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings with the Lake Superior Orchestra. Several friends who had attended the celebratory party for her (the one my therapist devised to restore Mom’s emotional equilibrium) made a point of greeting her at the concert with a hug. When I presented my first scholarly paper at a chapter meeting of the American Musicological Society, my mother booked a flight to Kansas City to attend the conference and hear my presentation.

Mom was the first person I called with the news when the a university offered me a position to teach music history. “Hurrah, you made it!” she crowed. At forty years old, I had finally secured a full-time job at a university. The contract offered only a year’s employment, with likely re-appointment if I completed my PhD. I spent the summer finalizing and submitting my PhD dissertation for defense. Mother understood the pressure to finish the doctorate in time for the start of the school year. She sent encouraging notes and thoughtful care packages. We chatted about suitable teacher attire, ideas for lesson plans, classroom bulletin boards. She was in her element as a mentor teacher.

I rented a house a few miles away from the university that allowed dogs. Our modest mortgage for an old house in the west end of Duluth was small enough that we could afford an inexpensive rental house down in the city. Dave kept his tenured position teaching percussion and jazz in the Duluth. We had already managed, for nearly two years, my crazy commuting schedule for doctoral studies; we could manage this probationary year as well. Ever the creative planner, Dave plotted weekend and mid-week getaways to be together, and the weeks we would alternate taking care of our two dogs. It would be OK, he assured me.

Two weeks before the start of my new job, my doctoral committee rejected my dissertation on the grounds that it lacked sufficient merit in writing style. Angry, jagged chords raged through my inner world as I re-read their critique

The committee’s rejection shouldn’t have surprised me, given the many instances throughout my coursework when my instructors expressed doubts about my “fitting in” with the field of musicology. I interpreted my committee’s decision as reflecting their discomfort with me daring to define my own identity as a doctoral student with a career well underway. Rather than behave as an apprentice, I sought mentorship and collegiality. Instead of spending time exclusively in the archives, I continued my active freelance career. My dissertation topic, moreover, might have exposed my professors’ ignorance about African American women in concert music. All that that could be levied against me was my writing style, deemed not sufficiently “scholarly.”

Dave, with Mom in agreement, advised me to focus on starting the school year instead of fighting my committee. They assured me that I could easily re-submit a revised dissertation in time to apply for my job as a full-time employee at the university at the end of the school year. They were just as determined to see me become Dr. Sadie Carr, come hell or high water. I stuffed my anger at my dissertation committee and dug into designing lesson plans. This situation with the dissertation would not get the upper hand.

The Lump

Two months into the school year, all semblance of control slipped my grasp – I was diagnosed with breast cancer.

Dave found the lump. A month before when I (grudgingly) performed my monthly self-exam, there was nothing there. Its rapid growth into a palpable mass indicated an aggressive cancer. When Dave called with the results of the biopsy, he was up in Duluth and I was alone at the rented house, preparing my lecture notes for the day. We cried over the phone. Before hanging up, we made lists of people to call and tasks to do.

I first called Julie to cancel her plans to drive down for a weekend with me. We screamed and cried together over the phone. Then I called Jane, who relayed that Dave had already called her with the news.

I screamed alone in the rental house for a full five minutes. Then I headed over to the university to arrange for a substitute teacher. Marie-Anne, a graduate student from Belgium, was studying outside my office. Seeing my stricken face and hearing me stutter out the news, she helped me finish my tasks to be able to leave. Taking my car keys, she insisted on driving me back to the rental house. “My dear, I must call David when we get there. You cannot drive safely.”

The surgery department at the Duluth Clinic scheduled an appointment at the end of the day.  I was in no condition to make the two-hour drive home to Duluth. Likewise, Dave was in no condition to drive down to get me. With the two of us crying and traumatized, Marie Anne made a call to Dave to discuss the matter. They decided to reach out to Jane again.

Marie Anne telephoned Jane and asked her to come and get me. Within minutes, Jane was in the car on the way to retrieve me and drive me back up to Duluth for my appointment with the surgeon. Marie Anne took temporary possession of my car, assuring me “I am an excellent driver, and I have training in nursing. I will help you figure this out, as will your friends.”

Dave frantically made various phone calls to the hospital, to the insurance company, to family. With Jane speeding to the Twin Cities, he went to school in search of a distraction. He doesn’t recall how long he sat slumped at his desk, head in his hands. But he remembers Sasha, pianist of Klassic Retro and spouse to Olga, peeking into the office.

“Preevyet, sabaka! (Hello, Dawg!). Oh no, Dave, something’s the matter…”

“Sasha, I can’t. I…Sadie…”

“What, what is it? Tell me, I am here.” Closing Dave’s office door, Sasha rushed to his side.

“She has cancer. I haven’t told anyone yet, I don’t know what to do.”

“Tak, tak, your Russian brother is here. Let me help…” With great tenderness, Sasha held my husband and let him weep.

I called Denise in Pittsburgh, my dear longtime friend from undergraduate days. She listened intently, asked a couple questions, then promised to call back with a plan for everyone to pitch in. “Get yourself home first, see the surgeon.  I’ll connect with Dave and Julie. Just focus on getting home, I’ll call later.”

Jane arrived in record time to the rental house. She held me fiercely and cried with me, then threw me into her car and told me “stay” while she packed a bag for me and locked the house. Our ride back to Duluth broke all sorts of speed limits and ran the gamut of feelings. We ping-ponged from bawling piteously, screaming out the car windows, laughing maniacally at stories of our past hijinks, cracking inappropriate jokes about our small boobs, veering back into crying jags.

We arrived to the cancer unit in Duluth and searched first for my case worker Lisa. In the elevator, Jane and I planned a dramatic entrance: I would introduce myself to Lisa as the one with breast cancer, and Jane would introduce herself as the breast donor. Lisa’s shocked silence at our gallows humor soon gave way to laughter. “Wow, that’s amazing you can find something to laugh about at this moment, no one has ever done that.”

All giggles faded once Dave arrived, face stricken with desperate fear. We huddled with Jane and cried together, then Jane took her leave as Lisa led us into the consultation room. The surgeon joined us shortly and explained the urgency of my condition. The tumor biopsy showed a rapidly growing aggressive strain of cancer. It was Thursday, and he scheduled my surgery for Monday. “Get as much rest as you can this weekend. Have friends come over for support.”

We called people with the updates. Denise called, and advised setting up a communications network of a few people Dave would contact, who would then contact others in a specified group of contacts. That way, we could update folks on my condition without making a ton of calls ourselves. Denise served as point person for the email network to people scattered outside of Minnesota. “Mary up in Maine, she’s going to want to know what is happening. You and I are like Mary and your Aunt Betty.” Denise also got connected to Susan, my former classmate and roomie in Russian studies.

We hosted a potluck for friends two nights later. Julie and Gregg showed up ahead of time and talked through things, distributing handouts of Denise’s call-network plan Everyone pitched in to set up the list of groups and group leaders, and phone numbers were exchanged. Giving Dave a list of just a few people to call helped us immensely. He would call  Julie and Gregg, Sasha and Olga, Jane, my department chair at the university, Denise, and his sister Kathi. They would do the rest bycalling or emailing people on their lists.

Within four days, I had surgery to remove a cancerous tumor in my left breast. The surgeon was pleased that the cancer had not spread to the sentinel lymph node – the gateway to the lymphatic system. But the margins of the tumor excision concerned him. Lingering cancer cells can lurk in the margins, and so I agreed to another surgery to make sure all was clear. While the surgeon analyzed the cellular type of the cancer, the remaining team of doctors plotted a course of treatment protocols for chemotherapy, radiation, and possibly another surgery.

A silver lining to the cancer peeked in to the new relationship I was building with my mother. She reportedly collapsed at her home in Ohio when Dave called her with the news of my diagnosis. We kept her updated on the surgeries, pathology reports, treatment plan. Fearful at the prospect of losing her daughter again, she seemed all in to be there for me.

Hearing Sick

Hospitals are noisy places, especially in operating rooms. All the machines beep, chirp, blare signals to the medical team; never do they synchronize with each others in pitch or rhythm. Their collective disorder annoyed my sense of musical organization. Under pre-anesthesia, I announced that my pulse monitor sounded an out of tune octave of the pitch “B.” During one surgery under full anesthesia, I reportedly complained about a monitor that sounded “a friggin’ tritone, for heaven’s sake; that’s a bad interval to play over and over; turn that off!” (they did not).

One machine that I found surprisingly soothing was the MRI. All of its magnets reflecting off of each other generates a loud knocking sound. Each time the technician re-calibrates the magnets for a different imaging, the knocking sounds change pattern. I’m told that people often tend to freak out in the MRI, firstly from being shoved into a little tube surrounded by the magnets and then the clanging knocking sound. Earplugs, headphones playing soothing music, even sedatives are offered. My response to the clanging was joyful recognition. “It’s minimalism! Steve Reich must have had lots of MRI’s” I shouted into the tube during my first session. The slowly shifting knocking patterns lulled me to sleep as I immersed myself into the music of the magnetic changes filling the room.

Two surgeries within a week of each other left some rather nasty incisions in my left side and under my arm. This presented a problem of adequate pain management for a recovering addict/alcoholic. During the night after my first surgery, I awoke to the terrifying, yet familiar and old, sensation of being really messed up on drugs. Indeed, I had been hooked up to a morphine drip for the pain. I begged the night nurse to taper it off, fearful of awakening a sleeping devil inside me.

The surgeon arrived in the morning quite surprised to find his patient clear-headed and refusing all narcotics. He released me from the hospital that afternoon on the condition that we found someone to help change the pressure bandages every day. Marie-Anne, who had wisely kept my car keys, drove herself up to Duluth to help. She arrived in the car I had left behind at the rental house, happily announcing “Mon dieu, you see your friends are all here to take care of you!”

New sounds of these activities stilled the more familiar sounds of my inner world. This was a new trauma, intensely physical but also existential. I waited for something to coalesce sonically, curious to discover whether the music in lectures of my brand new job would retain their strength. Perhaps new sounds, new tunes poised on the horizon of my expectations.

East-West Epiphany

Marie-Anne stayed for few days after my surgeries, expertly changing my bandages and helping me  shower and dress. She brought a gracious calm to our house, but she worried about the intensity of my post-operative pain. She shared her concerns with Jane and Patsey, who had been taking courses toward a degree in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). They came over one evening with a suggestion that I try acupuncture for the pain. I wasn’t so sure, but Marie-Anne encouraged me to try. I called Mom, who enthusiastically related stories from her years in China about miraculous recoveries with acupuncture.

The school where Jane and Patsey had been studying was brand new, minutes away from where Gladys and Roger Reiling lived. A team of doctors from China with expertise in both TCM and Western medicine founded the school, and it included a clinic open to the public. Students learned through clinical observation and supervised application of acupuncture and other TCM procedures.

Presenting me to the head of their degree program as their first case for consideration, Jane and Patsey secured an appointment for me to meet Dr. Lee. I accepted their offer rather reluctantly, afraid of yet another unknown.

Frankly, I felt resentful that I had to meet this Dr. Lee all on my own. Jane and Patsey and Dave were all at their jobs in Duluth; Marie-Anne had class at St. Thomas; Gladys and Roger were out of town. My left side ached, and I was cranky. Did this doctor even speak English? Did they use sterile needles? Is he going to jab them into the incision and make things worse?

The clinic reception area was tastefully decorated with Chinese art. I didn’t care about reading the brochures about TCM. My defenses were up as I imagined this doctor coming at my left side with needles and me punching him in the face for it. The receptionist interrupted my train of thoughts, leading me into the doctor’s consulting office and inviting me to sit. She placed the stack of papers I’d brought from the Duluth Clinic onto the doctor’s desk.

Dr. Lee soon arrived, greeted me with a nod, and took my pulse in both wrists. He summarized the notes that Jane and Patsey had provided, and asked me to verify my diagnosis and surgical procedures. He sifted through the stack of papers from the Duluth Clinic until he located the pathology report, blood report, and projected treatment protocols. After studying these quietly, he looked up at me and said, “I can relieve the pain you are experiencing now. But Chinese Medicine cannot cure your cancer. You must complete the treatments that your oncologist has advised, and I can restore your strength from those. Understand?” I nodded mutely, understanding nothing.

In the treatment room, I changed into a familiar “medical ugly” gown and examined the items in the room. There didn’t seem to be any big needles on the table, but there were two big infared lamps that looked like they could heat an entire buffet at Denny’s.

My nervousness was apparent in my chattiness with Dr. Lee when he returned and motioned for me to lie face up on the treatment table. A faint whine began buzzing between my ears.

“So, you’re from China?  That’s really such a long way from here.” (no reply from the doctor)

“My mom went to China…”

At this, the doctor muttered, “Lots of people go to China” as he opened a drawer in the table and pulled out a tray of needles. I could not, for the life of me, shut off my nervous yammering. This was all going to end very badly, with me running away in a gown and a doctor with a bloody nose.

“Oh but my mom wasn’t a tourist. She went over there to teach English.  And it wasn’t at a tourist town, it was in a rural province called Shandon.”

“I am from that province.”

“Oh really? Well, it was the capital city there. She was teaching doctors. It was hard for her because she didn’t speak Chinese.”

“I graduated from school in that city. When was she there?”

“No, this was a while back. She taught doctors how to speak English. It was for two years. But this was like, more than ten years ago.”

Dr. Lee stood motionless, wide-eyed, needles in hand. Looking intently at me, he spoke slowly, quietly.

“Your mother…she had problems with her left knee?  She lied about her age?”

“What? Well yes, but I don’t understand…”

“Is she Karin? Her husband died badly?”

“Yes. Wait. You know my mother?”

“You…are you Teacher Karin’s daughter?”

“How did you get here?”

“How did you find me here?”

We stared at each other in disbelief. I sat up from the treatment table, noting that the whine in my head had modulated to a lower vibration of humming. It expanded outside of me as presence seemed to enter the sound and the treatment room. Echoing from long ago, it emanated from me and from everywhere. Its familiar warmth filled my entire being and the room, and without linear speech or sound.

The presence made it clear: “Trust him. He will heal you.”

Transfixed within the sonic presence, I didn’t move. Dr. Lee looked around the room, perhaps also sensing a powerful, energized silence in our midst. Finally noticing his handfuls of tiny, thin acupuncture needles, he took a deep breath and shook himself back into motion with a faint smile. “OK, I must help you now. Please. Lie down. It’s OK. Yes, OK.”

Still too stunned to speak, I lay back on the treatment table. Dr. Lee moved swiftly over my body, dropping needles in me just about everywhere except my wounded left side. Several were around my knee, more around my ankles and wrists. He then positioned to large glowing infrared lamps over me before dimming the room lights.

“Rest now. I will come back.” Dr. Lee closed the door behind him, and I heard him calling out to the other doctors, talking excitedly in Chinese about “Laushe Karin.” Twenty minutes later, he returned and took out the needles, leaving again so I could change back into my clothes.

I was elated: All my post-operative pain had vanished!

When I returned to Dr. Lee’s consulting room, he and his partners were waiting for me. Faces wreathed in joyful smiles that their teacher’s daughter had come to their clinic, they recalled memories of her from their medical school days in Xinan. She had been a curiosity to them, since few Americans ventured that far into mainland China. They admired her tenacity to stay there for two years, appreciating her sincere passion for teaching. Especially, they loved her stories.

It seemed magical that the daughter of their American teacher had mysteriously appeared, so many years later, where they had launched new lives in the United States. “This is a very good omen, for us and for you,” Dr. Lee assured me. “You come back now, every week, with your oncology reports.”

Dr. Lee continued to treat me every week, first for post-operative pain and then for side effects from chemo and radiation. His medical credentials were for the PhD and included studies in Western as well as Eastern modalities. At my first appointment to discuss plans for chemotherapy, I handed the oncology doctor Dr. Lee’s business card. The two spoke over the phone about my treatment plan, and confirmed their collaboration. It was the first time that a TCM doctor was included in the team for a cancer patient at the Duluth Clinic.

A Reunion for My Mother

Far off in China, twelve years before my cancer diagnosis, my mother’s flight from widowhood had built a bridge to my healing. Because of her, a doctor fulfilling his dream to launch a career in the United States was now healing me. Dr. Lee had been a student in my mother’s advanced English classes at the College of Traditional Medicine in Xinan, Shandong Province. She helped him translate his first scholarly essay into English: An essay addressing breast cancer diagnosis and treatment!

After calling Dave, Jane, and a pastor friend about what had happened, I called Mom. I had to repeat myself at least twice before she grasped it all. Former students from China were in Minnesota, tending to her sick prodigal daughter; what were the odds of that?

Cancer joined two seemingly incompatible journeys – my mother’s in China, mine in therapy – twelve years after that exploding emotional time bomb had sent me to the psych ward. The magnificence of this convergence continues to humble me. With great joy, I brokered a reunion between my mother and her former students at the clinic, one who was now my doctor.

The local newspaper wanted to run a feature story on us. They wanted to cover my first chemotherapy treatment at the Duluth Clinic, and then my post-chemo treatment at the American Academy of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine in Roseville.

December 20th – the anniversary of my father’s suicide – was the date of my first chemotherapy. My mother flew in to Minnesota night before, the first she’d seen me since the diagnosis. At the hospital, I clung to Dave for bravery. I pointed out to Mom my oncologist as he walked by and waved.  She detected in his name but also his face a fellow descendant of Eastern Europeans. “Another good omen, Sadie!”

A reporter arrived with their photographer, and we all went into the infusion room. Dave and Mom answered the reporter’s questions while I focused on the nurse administering the chemo drugs into my veins.  She wore thick gloves, and she told everyone to stay clear of the I-V bag because it was highly toxic. Everyone moved away from me a couple feet.

The nurse instructed everyone in my household and visitors to use a different bathroom from me at home for the next three days, because what I would pee could burn them. This stuff could kill them, but not me? Dave pushed his chair back close to me and touched my knee. “We can do this, take a big breath. I love you.”

I recall nothing of the reporter’s questions during the appointment; I focused on getting through it. My mother easily took charge of the interview, protectively touching my arm as she deflected questions too difficult to answer. Something in the chemo drug cocktail made me ravenous. As soon as we got home, Mom got into our kitchen and cooked up just about everything she could find. I ate it all.

Come morning, though, my body felt utterly destroyed. Alien. It seemed as though bugs were crawling beneath my skin. Speaking seemed an exhausting task. Moving from bed to bathroom took tremendous effort. Everything I had eaten the day before churned sourly in my stomach; I vowed never to eat again. For two days I lolled around sipping water or weak tea, sleeping, moving from couch to bed to bathroom.

Dave’s worried face confirmed that I was profoundly ill. He and my mother whispered about how to get me to eat. He practically carried me to the car for our two-hour drive to Roseville to see Dr. Lee. Mom bundled me up in the back seat with a pillow and blanket, worry all over her face. For the next two hours, I slipped in and out of consciousness as the car bumped along the highway. As I had done so many years ago at the dentist’s office, I floated along my mother’s voice to stay tethered to the planet. Whenever I heard Dave’s voice in conversation with hers, I tried to wrap myself inside his sound.

The car nap restored enough energy for me to appreciate the joyful arrival of Lǎoshī Karin to the American Academy of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine. The reporter had returned with their photographer to captured the reunion, with her star pupil Lee Yubin (Dr. Lee) embracing her. The other doctors greeted her excitedly, ready to show off their new school. Mom reveled in the adoration of her former pupils from China, listening to them recount stories of learning English or their dreams of coming to the United States.

Dr. Lee kept one eye on me throughout, and soon gestured that Dave bring me to the consultation room for some rest. Eventually Dr. Lee escorted Mom and the reporter in to join us. The photographer captured him studying my pulse, Mom looking expectantly at him. Lǎoshī needed her former student to heal her ailing daughter. Sitting back from his examination, Dr. Lee grimly reported that my heartbeat had been altered by the chemotherapy drugs. His concern deepened upon learning that I had not eaten in days.

Dave helped me into a treatment room and helped me change into a gown. Mom and Dr. Lee soon entered, and she watched as he methodically placed the needles all over me. I felt surprised that these needles were in places completely different from when he had treated my post-surgical pain. The glowing infared lamps turned on, he adjusted them to hover over my torso. Leaving with my mother in tow, the doctor motioned to a chair. “Dave, you stay here, I will take your mother for a tour of the school.”

Dave sat close by, taking in my body covered with needles. I began to cry as I looked into his expression mirroring the sad, scared mess I felt I was.

“Close your eyes, try to rest. I’ll look over you.”

“I’m so scared.”

“Me too. We can be scared together.”

For thirty minutes I dozed under Dave’s watchful gaze while the needles worked their medicinal treatment. Dr. Lee returned, removed the needles, and left to allow Dave to help me get up and dress.

“Woaaaaa, wait. Wait!”

“What? Did he hurt you?”

“Holy cow. No, don’t help me, I don’t need it.”

I felt completely normal. My head was clear, my skin felt fine, my energy returned. I felt so hungry, too! Half an hour of needles did all this?  They had eliminated pain, and now the side effects of chemo. Dave and I hugged, kissed, and danced a bit as I finished getting dressed.

In the lobby, Dr. Lee handed Dave a small packet of herbs and a list of ingredients to make a kind of soup to aid digestion. The ingredients were in Chinese; Dave was to go into an Asian grocery in Minneapolis, hand the grocer the list, and wait while they got the stuff. Mom entered the lobby, her tour complete.

“You need food now. Karin and Dave get her something to eat,” Dr. Lee ordered. He and the other doctors surrounded my mother in a loving embrace, holding on for a few more moments to the beautiful gift of their reunion. All three of us cried as we got back into the car, all for different reasons.

A block away from Dr. Lee’s clinic, we pulled into Good Earth restaurant. I chugged a protein shake while Dave and Mom were still browsing the menu.

“What sounds good, honey? Toast, a little bit of soup?”

“Pizza. Hamburgers. No, how about pizza with hamburger meat on it”

“Well, that’s a lot of food for someone who hasn’t eaten for days..”

“I need another one of these,” I jiggled my empty shake glass to the server.

I ate an entire meat lover’s pizza and a frosted brownie for dessert. On top of two protein shakes. I laughed at my gluttony, relieved to be coming back into my body. Mom was beaming, beatific in her full heart.

We put her on a plane for Ohio the next day. She returned home feeling hopeful, appreciated. Doctors of both East and West practices were tending to me. Her soul had been nurtured in showers of praise and gratitude. Reuniting with her pupils from China renewed the meaningfulness to her work there. She had traveled halfway around the world to save herself, not knowing at the time that she had set in motion the forces that would save her daughter.

Her ungrateful, lying daughter…who had accused her of something terrible.

That mustard seed of a thought had been festering in the untended garden of my mother’s mind. All it required was water. And I’d bet that Tressie was ready at home, buckets filled to the brim to water that seed.

The water was full of poison.