There's no preparation for hearing a doctor tell you the life-altering news that you have cancer. Especially when you're an otherwise healthy, fit 37-year-old who reluctantly went to the hospital for a CT scan, then a needle biopsy of swollen groin lymph nodes, although your anxiety typically tells you that every minor ailment is probably fatal. It's ironic to me that this one time I wasn't worried.
But when a woman from my doctor's office called me at work one morning in July and told me I needed to come in, preferably that afternoon, to hear my biopsy results, and encouraged me "to bring a supportive person," I knew my life was now divided: before and after that phone call. My heart palpitated, my mind raced, and partial shock set in. I breathed deeply and tried to stay calm, tear-free, and focused on work (I was at work, after all), knowing that hysteria would not help me. For the next few hours, I alternated between eagerness to end the suspense and dread of hearing the diagnosis. I sent my boyfriend, Mark, a message with the news that my biopsy results were in, and they weren't good. We both knew, without saying the actual word, that it could mean only one thing. When I left work, drove to my doctor's office, and walked into the examining room, it became real.
My doctor came in just a few minutes after I arrived, with an apparent sense of urgency, and gently delivered the news that my biopsy tested "positive for cancer," likely GI in nature. I was stunned, sure there had to be a mistake. Hadn't multiple rounds of recent blood work results been fine? Yes, she acknowledged, but "we weren't checking for cancer." She handed me a tissue, gave me a list of helpfully-scheduled appointments (a PET scan, an MRI, oncology), and encouraged me to cry and lean on friends and family for support. "You're so stoic," she told me, which was partly true. But mostly I was in shock. She hugged me goodbye, and I floated out of her office in a daze and on a mission. I had to keep moving...or who knows? Collapse into a hysterical heap? There was plenty of time for that later.
I drove to a nearby hospital for blood work to check my tumor markers (so much new lingo that would eventually become familiar), then on to a previously-scheduled appointment with a gastroenterologist. The process began about a month earlier when I saw a doctor for what I suspected were hemorrhoids (and oh, by the way, also this lump on the left side of my pelvic area), and she told me I would have to see a specialist if they didn't clear up on their own. They didn't, and I was miserable, having spent a small fortune on soothing creams, gels, and pads without relief.
Now I walked into this new doctor's office and bluntly (as has become my nature) told him that I had just been diagnosed with cancer and would need to schedule a colonoscopy. The poor doctor and his assistant visibly reeled as if I'd struck them. I don't think I believed the shocking words even as I said them. But the doctor said he felt a tumor, proof despite my disbelief, when examining me, so it had to be real, right?
As if all that wasn't enough for one day, I still had a dental cleaning on my way home. (You know it has been a rough day when having tartar scraped off your teeth is not the worst thing you've endured.) When the hygienist asked if I'd had any recent changes to my medical history, I shared my diagnosis. Clearly caught off guard, she asked if I wanted to continue with the cleaning or reschedule. I just wanted, needed, to keep going.
And I did. After finally making it home from all those appointments, my boyfriend came over and we went out for dinner at a local restaurant. We kept the conversation light, and even laughed a bit as we ate, but there was a foreboding undercurrent. He knew, and I knew he knew, but we didn't address it until later, after dinner, after I called my mom and told her (she took the news calmly, but told me later she was "angry" and upset about my diagnosis).
I held it all together until that night when I laid awake and cried, telling Mark, who held me, that I was scared (he said he was, too). How would I handle all of this? What if I couldn't work? What if I lost my health insurance? Would I survive? So many new, viable fears had entered my mind and lodged there for a long, uncomfortable stay.
