It's Cancer

I'm sure I'm not alone in this: when one imagines what it might be like to be hearing these words, it's never accurate. You think think you're going to be in a clean doctor's office, and that you'll be ready. You never expect you'll be kneeling in the hallway, in your underwear, because your gorgeous MD (the one that looks like the love child of Richard Gere and Brad Pitt) called you as soon as he got the results.

"It's cancer."

The room spins, you wonder how someone could be sleeping one minute, and hearing "it's cancer" the next. You wonder if this could be another one of those moments in which you're only thinking of what it would be like; what your mom went through, first person (I mean, you SAW what it was like...)

So, the next thing you know, you're on the phone with the surgeon, and they're telling you to come in this afternoon, and you do, despite how you haven't slept since yesterday, and you wait forever because there was a booking error and they've accidentally booked post op patients as well as pre-op today--so she's only an hour late, but you sit there and hear the full news.

Ductal, invasive, moderately differentiated...

Lumpectomy, and "DEFINITELY chemo, DEFINITELY radiation" for someone of my age.

My age?

Do I have an age? I'm outside my body now, floating somewhere in the air--left of the dreams of going back to school, there goes the plane with me on it--I had tickets for August 28th...and look, down there...that's the horrible little studio apartment I was going to call home for the next two years...I paid the deposit already.

I keep thinking I'll wake up; that this is all some horrible dream. The surgeon said she had no doubts I'd "survive the cancer" but I said "Yes, and I know that when you say 'survive' you mean "five year survival rates."

Always the ticking time bomb now. Sure they'll cut it out, but when and where will it make its next appearance? Does anyone with cancer ever just die of anything else before a metastasis? Should I take up hang-gliding, or riding a motorcycle without a helmet?

My mother would yell at me. She had a 'never say die' attitude. And Lance Armstrong...how did he do it? So many more don't do it.

At least I don't have to worry about MS anymore.

Through all of this, it looks much worse through George's eyes. He's going to get sick himself from worrying about me if he doesn't take care of himself.