And today was such a beautiful day outside, even though the cold here in Cincinnati is still pretty severe. And it still was a beautiful day all through it.
People like me get philosophical on days like today (and all the other kinds of days, too). Like, what would you do if something awful happened on a gorgeous rare day like this? We ask ourselves stuff like that.
And you always have answers. You have to always have answers, mostly because you started being philosophical like this in high school or college, and back then, if you didn’t have answers, people thought you were stupid.
So when you’re contemplating a question like the above, you imagine yourself being stoical in the doctor’s office. You ask, in your fantasy, for all sorts of second and third opinions. You also ask all manner of knowledgeable questions. You know just what to say, and so does the doctor. Your husband, of course, is the very definition of “pillar of strength.” That goes without question.
But how it really turns out is that you spend the days since Thursday looking at the full-color pictures that your gastroenterologist took during your endoscopy and colonoscopy. The smooth pink tube of your esophagus has this round, orange, marble-sized (?) (probably a lot smaller) thing in it. You spent all weekend coming up with ideas of what it could be that wasn’t cancer, that was easily treatable by taking Prilosec and eating handfuls of Tums at a time.
You steel yourself on Monday morning to call the doctor’s office to get your biopsy results, which will turn out to be not so bad, because as all the world knows, you’re paranoid about your health.
But they call you first. The nice nurse on the other end of the phone says “Can you be here at 11:50?” and that tells you all. If it was good news, they’d make you work for it. Bad news, that comes right up to meet you with a happy face on at 9 in the morning when the sun is shining.
Since nobody has said the dreaded C-word yet, you manage not to get worked up before you get to the office. When you’re called, your husband comes in with you.
The doctor comes in and sits down and you forget about the Redbook that you were reading while waiting and pretending you were a normal person. Fortunately, she is one of those doctors that doesn’t like beating around the bush. “There’s a bit of ulceration there, and there’s a tumor.”
“Cancer, then,” you say.
“Yes.”
It turns out that Dr. G has taken over your week’s schedule, when you’d planned to head to Boulder and have some quality time in your new favorite place and read and watch reruns of House M.D. You now have CAT scans planned for you, and a meeting with an oncologist. You are given as many Kleenexes as you want (“They’re free!”). And you are given a hug, told to call any time, and sent to get your oral contrast for your CAT scan.
And there you are. And it’s still a beautiful day.
white pebble 