The idea that someone knows whether or not I have cancer but is keeping it from me is ridiculous, but here it is, actually happening. “Your results are in. The doctor is out until Monday. Only the doctor can relay your results. I’m sorry, ma’am. Have a nice weekend.”
I can’t even bring myself to do a Lifetime movie style screaming rant at the “Have a nice weekend.” Even in a Lifetime movie, it’s hard to believe that someone would write a scene in which Judith Light or Meredith Baxter Birney is told that she won’t find out whether or not she has cancer until Monday, and therefore she should have a nice weekend. The searing rays of frustration, panic, and fury shooting through my brain but not, surprisingly directly out of my eyeballs, which would be appropriate, satisfying, and about as believable as “Have a nice weekend,” turn off for a moment and the ridiculousness of the situation washes over me. It’s almost comforting; that familiar feeling of on-the-verge-of-hysteria laughter comes over me, but it’s different this time.
It’s bitter.
I spend a lot of time reassuring people and myself that it’s ok, that I’m not going to die no matter what, answering my mother’s tearful plea of “Why you?” with “Well, why not me?,” reassuring my husband that he’s not going to have to live without me as he lies with his head on my chest repeating that he can’t live without me, and believing it, genuinely believing that this is just a bit of bad luck, just like finding a job right out of grad school with excellent health insurance and paid sick time was a bit of good luck, because I’m certainly not the smartest, hardest working, or most needy newly-minted librarian in the greater Boston area. I’ve faced this situation with something approaching aplomb, and yet, regardless of the stiffness of my upper lip, this is more than I can smile and nod at just now.
The fact that whether or not I have cancer is now, finally, known for sure and yet I will not be told until Monday and should therefore have a nice weekend is just over what I can handle. I handled an offhand remark from my oral surgeon that I have a thyroid nodule and I should get it checked out. I went on to handle my doctor telling me I need a biopsy but it’s probably nothing, having to tell my family that I need a biopsy but it’s probably nothing, a biopsy that showed something as opposed to nothing, and a surgery to determine whether or not the something is cancer. If it is, I will need a second surgery and then I will need to be treated with radioactive iodine, both of which I will handle. I will handle having cancer, in fact; I know that I probably do, but I need to know for sure, and I need some help.
I turn to my husband, who is wild-eyed and pale, as usual. I put my hands on his shoulders and look into his eyes and speak calmly and firmly to keep the searing rays from coming back just yet.
“I need you to call my therapist and tell her that my results are in, but the hospital won’t tell me what they are. Please have her call them and tell them that I am crazy. Have her tell them that I have an anxiety disorder and that I will spend the weekend out of my mind if I don’t know. If necessary, have her hint that I might hurt myself. I AM NOT GOING TO HURT MYSELF. But I need to know and I need your help because I can’t spend any more time on the phone right now. I can’t talk to you anymore right now. I’m going to take two Valium and I’m going to lie down. Thank you. I love you.”
I kiss his forehead, turn around, walk into the bathroom, and slam the door as hard as I can. I open the medicine cabinet, take two Valium, close the medicine cabinet, and look at myself in the mirror. I look pretty wild-eyed and pale myself, now that I’m alone. I pull a towel down from its rack, stuff it into my mouth, and scream as hard as I can. The searing rays are back. Between the scream and the rays, my head is now throbbing and I’m dizzy. I feel like I may faint, actually, and I would welcome fainting. I open the medicine cabinet back up and decide to take a third Valium, because I need to pass the fuck out soon. At the last moment, I sort of come to my senses and bite the pill in half so I’m only taking two and a half Valium. My doctor advised me to never take more than two, but I figure it’s a special occasion and my anxiety is high enough that the extra half will target it and not the part of me that might normally be hurt by extra Valium. I’m still present enough to know that doesn’t really make sense and that’s not how drugs work, but not for long. I open the door of the bathroom to hear my husband shakily repeating “Ok, thank you, doctor. Thank you. Thank you so much.”
“She’s not a doctor, she’s a clinical social worker!” I unhelpfully holler down the hallway, as if it matters. I get into bed and blissfully drop my head onto the pillow. I can already feel the two and a half Valium dimming everything, turning down the searing rays to a nice manageable glow, unfurling my clenched muscles, highlighting how tense and rigid I usually keep my body and brain these days. I can actually feel my brow smooth out and my teeth come apart, relaxing my jaw that has apparently been clamped shut for possibly several days, judging from the ache spreading over my face. I want more blankets, even though there are four piled over me now. I want to be weighted down by something physical. I fall asleep.
***
It’s the day before my second surgery. I go to a yoga class to try and relax and center myself and all that other nonsense that I generally avoid. I need to take deep breaths, though, and I am never very good at doing so, so I’m going to force myself to calm the fuck down. It’s confirmed that I have cancer and that I will spend the next several months getting various treatments and then I won’t have cancer anymore. I’m 32 years old, which is young to have thyroid cancer, but apparently this works in my favor, too. This is comforting, actually, but no one will join me in being comforted.
My mother calls every day; every other day I take her call and reassure her that yes, I know she wishes that this was happening to her instead of me and yes, I know that she would trade places with me if she could. I’m not sure why she thinks I would find this reassuring; like most people, I am more afraid of my mother getting cancer than I am of actually having cancer.
This has been especially hard on her because not only has she had to endure the my-kid-has-cancer-and-there’s-nothing-I-can-do racket, the psychic powers on which she claims to have relied throughout her life have failed her as well. During the aforementioned Herculean process just to get a diagnosis, my mother remained calm and smiling because her “sources,” as I think of them, had assured her that I “do not have cancer and have never had cancer.” My mother’s sources comprise her own unique brand of spirituality; from what I understand, they include various spirits and angels, along with a hodge-podge of hunches, signs from the universe, symbolic coincidences, and a psychic advisor named Carol with whom she has consulted for many years. This was her mantra, always spoken in the exact same way–“Do not have cancer and have never had cancer”–as if there was a possibility that I HAD had cancer at some point but it had righted itself. Luckily, the fact that the cancer that was indeed present was also very treatable and, eventually, entirely removed from my body provided a loophole for the sources; to this day, whenever my mom passes along some advice for me from the sources, I remind her that the sources were wrong about my cancer, and she happily responds, “Yes, but, you don’t have cancer anymore, do you?”
This negates the “have never had” section of the sources’ diagnosis, but I don’t bring that up, and besides, she’s right; I don’t have cancer anymore.
All teasing and sarcasm aside, I do understand the urge to seek help and guidance from something more powerful than bumbling, fallible human beings when faced with hardship. I can’t say that I wouldn’t have sought a little other-worldly help had my diagnosis been, say, fatal, but within this situation, anything that might be classified as prayer felt entirely unnatural. Right before my first operation, a woman who appeared to have stepped directly off the cover of a Putumayo CD of acoustic lullabies for little humans, all linen, kale, and fresh air, stopped by my surgical bed to ask my mother and I if we wanted to join her in a pre-surgery prayer. “Hahahahaha…” I answered rudely, as I was not expecting this at all and was really craving a nice pre-surgery cocktail more than anything else. My mother stepped in to claim her place as the Head Prayer Warrior at my sickbed, informing Putumayo that I sometimes allow her to pray for me (this was news to me; she had never asked) and that maybe we could all pray together. We all joined hands and Mom and Putumayo had a nice little chat with God/sources/the universe while I gritted my teeth and silently asked God/sources/the universe to prove their existence once and for all and interrupt this prayer circle with a nice, heaping dose of general anesthesia.
I shake my head to try and clear out these thoughts, because the past is the past and all I can really control is myself and the way I react to not just the cancer, but other people’s reactions to the cancer. I don’t know how I would fail and have failed to comfort my own loved ones in their times of need; I probably failed my grandmother, for example, who died after a life-long battle with lymphoma when I was sixteen years old, in ways I can’t even imagine. All I can do is care for myself, and this yoga class seems like a good way to do so, and it doesn’t involve any “sources.” Deep breaths. Deep, cleansing, peaceful breaths.
“All right, we’re going to go into our first inversion now. Inversions are particularly good for the thyroid, which is the seat of youth and beauty.”
“HAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA…”
My deep, cleansing, peaceful breaths come shrieking out in what I have come to call my “I have cancer, but it’s ok, it’s not that kind of cancer” laugh. I take what is left of my seat of youth and beauty and leave the studio so we can spend our last night together before I lose it forever.
***
I’ve never been a joiner. The idea of belonging to a team, a tribe, a clique, or a club does not appeal to me. Some people have anxiety dreams involving nudity or public speaking; mine involve suddenly having to re-experience the dread and horror of discovering that I have to participate in the bullshit exercise of a “group project,” and furthermore, we will all be graded equally as a team. One side effect of cancer that to me was only slightly worse than the nausea, decreased life expectancy, and so on was the fact that I had been inducted into a sort of society against my wishes. When I told my friend who had recently gone into remission after a long, shitty bout with Ewing’s sarcoma that I did indeed have The Cancer, she quoted Gilda Radner at me: “Well, welcome to the elite club that nobody wants to join!” As someone who would really rather not join ANY sort of club, this was especially galling. I understood the comfort and camaraderie that comes from joining with other people who have been or are going through the same challenge, but I didn’t feel it myself. It felt like just one more damn thing I had to do, one more occasion to which I had to rise.
Coping with cancer didn’t feel like a group project to me, and I felt the same mild irritation and palpable lack of connection when someone meaningfully told me that they, too, were a cancer “survivor” that I felt when someone told me that they, too, were half-Jewish or from New Hampshire. One particularly cranky adolescent summer, I read Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., which introduced me to the concept of a “granfalloon,” which is defined as a “a proud and meaningless association of human beings.” Vonnegut gives “the Communist Party, the Daughters of the American Revolution, and any nation, any time, anywhere” as examples. This was a comfort and a triumph for me to read as a 14-year-old, as it gave me proof that at least one other person had been as down on groups and group projects as I was. The word “granfalloon” echoed through my head again and again throughout my bout with cancer.
I didn’t want to join this club and get lumped into a group simply because there were other people that had what I had. I wanted to get cancer over with and carry on.
What I didn’t realize is that cancer should, in fact, be a group project. My refusal to acknowledge that even if my cancer wasn’t going to kill me, it was going to be in charge for a little while, did more harm than good. My second surgery required an overnight hospital stay. My husband slept beside my hospital bed on a little cot. In the middle of the night, I swam up from the sea of sedatives and got out of bed to pee. On my way back to bed, I was suddenly very aware of the fact that I was staying overnight in a hospital because I had just had surgery because I had cancer.
There was no sarcastic laughter, no reassuring myself that it was okay, that I wasn’t going to die, that it wasn’t that kind of cancer, as I had rushed to tell everyone with whom I had come into contact within the last year. I was confused and scared and sad. I made my way over to the cot and tried to crawl in next to my husband, despite the fact that there was barely enough room for him in there. “Hi!” I called breezily. “I’m getting in bed with you!” “Hi! What? No! You can’t get in here. There’s not enough room and it’s not safe. You need to get back into your own bed, come on.” I burst into tears, feeling utterly rejected and forlorn. “No! You can make room! You only want me with you when it’s safe!” He hugged me and tucked me back into my hospital bed and held my hand until I fell back to sleep. He was right, of course, but so was I. By the end of that year, we had separated and two years later we got divorced.
My having cancer was pretty bad, but there was no way that it was the worst thing that was going to happen in the course of a lifetime. The inappropriateness of me trying to join him in on a cot covered in tubes aside, he really did only want to be with me when it was safe, and safety is never guaranteed, hence the reason “poorer,” “bad times,” and “sickness” are included in traditional marital vows. If we couldn’t get through my non-fatal cancer damaged and tired but stronger and closer, as opposed to just damaged and tired, we couldn’t get through the rest of our lives together.
My mother and I, of course, have never sworn to spend the rest of our lives together, but it’s something we continue to do, regardless of our disagreement about which sources to trust and which sources to ignore. Every time I tell her how sad and guilty I am that I had to break my marriage vows, she stares me down and informs me in no uncertain terms that I did the right thing, despite the fact that she loved my ex-husband very much, and that I am stronger, smarter, and better for doing so. It’s exactly what I need to hear; calm, factual, down-to-earth reassurance that this is bad, but it’s not the worst.
She got a little mad at me after I let her read this; she didn’t love the way I portrayed her, but she was proud of me for writing it and thanked me for showing it to her anyway.
She’s a pretty good source.
Tags: cancer, divorce, health, karen corday, mothers, relationships
I don’t have the words to describe how timely and powerful this was for me as I read it. Thank you so much for sharing your experience.
Thank you! I’m so sorry it’s timely, but I’m glad my sharing helped. <3
This is so well-written, moving, and relatable. Especially screaming into a towel and the dark night of the soul (or whatever) during an overnight hospital stay. Thank you for writing it.
Thank you; I cried/marveled over YOUR piece and am so psyched to share a Toast day with you!
OMG SAME HERE! Happy Toast day!
Karen, what strong writing! I’m personally extra-moved by your relationship with your mom, because I treasure mine, too, but have become incapable of showing her anything I write before it’s printed, even if it mentions her & that would be the polite thing to do.
If you weren’t opposed to it, I would proudly & meaninglessly declare myself part of Team Karen Corday.
Still nervous about her seeing this now that it’s up! Moms! Thank you for being on my team!
If you can be brave, then so can I! Love you, Mom
Know what a good mom you are. My mother has been planning to be offended by everything I write since I picked up a crayon. Not surprisingly, she is frequently disappointed in me.
Hi, Mom! I love you! Thank you!
Oh my god, this just made me burst into tears in my room. I don’t have this kind of Mom. Thank you for being this kind of Mom.
If we couldn’t get through my non-fatal cancer damaged and tired but stronger and closer, as opposed to just damaged and tired, we couldn’t get through the rest of our lives together.
Oof, that is so well-observed. Nothing exposes the seams of a relationship — any kind of relationship — more than a crisis like this.
The word “granfalloon” echoed through my head again and again throughout my bout with cancer.
This hit me like a brick. There’s someone I love, someone I’ve suffered through a crisis with, someone I’ve stood beside in the trenches, who subscribes to what I now recognize as (and what she will never recognize as) the granfalloon philosophy, shoving me up against other people in the most uncomfortable ways.
I trust her with all my heart when times are tough, and she knows she can trust me too. But when times are good, she wants to swaddle everyone up onto big happy granfalloons, and I don’t want or need that. I see now what she’s doing, and it might help me cope with it the inevitable next time.
Thank you so much! I never thought I’d have the opportunity to use the word “granfalloon” in anything, but there it was, just waiting for us.
I maybe laugh-cried at your comments about your mother. For the first time, I think I’ve read something that sums up my feelings and relationship with my mother.
Thank you for writing this.
Laugh-crying is where it’s at; that makes my day. Thank you for reading!
OMG, “Have a good weekend.” I know I’ve said some dumb shit in my time, but I hope to heaven it’s never been as dumb as that.
Amazing piece. Thank you. One of my best friends got Hodgkins in her early 30s. She’s fine now, but so much of this resonated with my memory of her experience. Especially the absurdity of having to reassure OTHER PEOPLE when you’re the one with motherfucking cancer.
I got the same thing from the woman I talked to when I called to schedule a therapy appointment the day after my husband told me he didn’t love me anymore (which I had hinted at when she asked me why I wanted to make the appointment), and I was like, I appreciate the sentiment, but I’m pretty sure that’s not happening.
WTF is wrong with people?! I think you can safely assume the day is a wash when disease/dealth/heartbreak/etc. is involved.
betsaroo, I’m glad your friend is ok!
I think they need a special script for the people on the phone in those situations, because I know “have a nice day” is a customer-service reflex, but it’s SO inappropriate sometimes.
Thank you! And I’m glad that you’re ok, although I’m awfully sorry you had to go through it. Even for cancers with high survival rates and good prognoses, the experience is just so physically and emotionally brutal. (Not that you need me to tell you that.)
I had thyroid cancer when I was 29. My diagnosis story differs from yours only at the biopsy: mine was “the results were inconclusive, so since we can’t say for sure either way, we want to go ahead and take the whole thing out”. The golf-ball-sized lump in my neck was benign, but my thyroid was full of cancer. (Fortunately they got it all in one go, and a couple of radioactive iodine treatments later, I was just fine.)
I went through the process feeling like whatever was going to happen would happen, so there was no sense in worrying about it. I kept getting people telling me how strong I was, how brave. But I didn’t feel that way at all. I didn’t have anybody: my mother lived far away (but came for the surgery), my shitbag father didn’t even show up and then didn’t call for weeks, and my job was surprisingly unsympathetic.
I got…I guess solidarity? from this, because who the hell gets cancer at our respective ages? Bodies are dumb, man.
I know, right? I’m so glad you’re ok! Fist of solidarity raised! Wasn’t the radioactive iodine part somehow close to the worst? So sick, so dizzy, so angry, so tired, so alone…REPEAT AGAIN AND AGAIN FOR DAYS.
Thank you so much for this; I love it. I also had a thyroid nodule biopsied (thankfully not cancerous, but indicative of another thyroid condition), and the two-week long period between the procedure and my follow-up were the worst, especially the three days before my follow-up when the doctor’s office called me to let me know that my results were in and my doctor would discuss them with me at my appointment. That phone call was pointlessly worrisome and I still have no clue why they would think it’s a good idea.
I did not tell my mom about the biopsy until after I had gotten the results so that I could avoid the kind of hand-wringing and worrying you describe with your own mother. But I did make the mistake of telling an old friend from school that I had had a biopsy done on a thyroid nodule and without asking me, she immediately sent out a mass email to all of her friends and relatives (I make it sound like a lot, but really it was only, like, six people) who had had cancer and CC’d me on it, so I spent the next month or so getting “inspirational” and “supportive” messages from survivors. My friend meant well, but it felt like such a violation that I didn’t tell anyone else. I didn’t end up having cancer, but even so, I really resented that she tried to force the granfalloon philosophy on me when it was something I needed to work through mostly on my own with a few close friends to talk to when I needed it.
Inspirational messages from a mass email! NO! But then it’s like….how does one complain about well-meaning inspirational messages and not sound like a monster person…oh look, something else to worry about along with CANCER. I’m so glad you’re ok; thanks for reading!
I loved this! And I had an “I have cancer, but it’s ok, it’s not that kind of cancer” laugh too.
I did such a good job reassuring everyone I would be fine after my diagnosis that as soon as I finished treatment, they just expected me to jump right back into my old life. This was when I discovered the online cancer community, which helped me deal with the mess that is life after cancer.
I’m glad I’m not alone in the “not that kind of cancer laugh”; I still do it sometimes, years later, and it’s always weird for everyone involved. Sorry, cancer is weird! I’m so glad you’re ok; thanks for reading!
Thank you for writing this. When my mom called me to tell me that she had cancer, I responded awkwardly and ended up calling her back immediately to apologize for kind of freaking out. I still think about the ways I failed her.
(Sometimes I don’t mind being part of a granfalloon; I’m happy to have been granfallooned with every Toastie that I’ve met. Although perhaps being a Toastie defies the “meaningless” part of the word’s definition.)
Cancer freaks people out! It’s totally ok…I’m sure your mom appreciates you as much as I appreciate my mom, which is a lot. I am experiencing the joy of a granfalloon today, now that you mention it…it’s pretty great! Rethinking granfalloons…
Every time I think about how I responded to my boyfriend telling me his dad had cancer, I feel gutted with shame. I just sort of….stared at him, flashing back to when my sister told me she had cancer five years earlier.
It was so not my finest hour. I’m sweating now, just thinking about it.
No shame; we all do what we can. There are very few “finest hours” when it comes to responding to bad news.
“Every time I tell her how sad and guilty I am that I had to break my marriage vows, she stares me down and informs me in no uncertain terms that I did the right thing, despite the fact that she loved my ex-husband very much, and that I am stronger, smarter, and better for doing so. It’s exactly what I need to hear; calm, factual, down-to-earth reassurance that this is bad, but it’s not the worst.”
*sniff* This hit home for me particularly hard.
Thank you! It ended up being the teariest part for me to write…so many different types of tears, as it turns out.
“My mother and I, of course, have never sworn to spend the rest of our lives together, but it’s something we continue to do, regardless of our disagreement about which sources to trust and which sources to ignore. Every time I tell her how sad and guilty I am that I had to break my marriage vows, she stares me down and informs me in no uncertain terms that I did the right thing, despite the fact that she loved my ex-husband very much, and that I am stronger, smarter, and better for doing so. It’s exactly what I need to hear; calm, factual, down-to-earth reassurance that this is bad, but it’s not the worst.
She got a little mad at me after I let her read this; she didn’t love the way I portrayed her, but she was proud of me for writing it and thanked me for showing it to her anyway.
She’s a pretty good source.”
This whole thing was beautifully written and I loved it, but when I got to this part, I just burst into tears. All the yes to this and to you.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. So much.
Oof. Finally created a comment account because this hit so close. Last Wednesday, I had a ultrasound for a known and minor kidney abnormality, during which the tech became very alarmed, started paging my doctor, and when my doc didn’t respond, assured me I would hear by the end of the day from my doctor. My doctor was unreachable until Saturday, despite many frantic calls, pages from her staff, etc. No one would share with me what was so alarming. In the end, it was nothing more than what has always been there.
This comes on the heels of being diagnosed with cystic fibrosis as an adult (in December), at the same time as having my own thyroid cancer scare (which was fortunately negative). I so so empathize with how insensitive the medical system is to people who are trying to balance their own fears with the fears of their loved one and with the facts that no one will level with them. My life is so much more complicated now than it was 7 months ago, but even the few kind and caring medical professionals I’ve dealt with have no understanding of the stress that this puts people through.
What in the world?! Every time I hear about someone else getting that kind of tone deaf bullshit runaround it makes me so furious. Medical diagnoses are part of every day life to them, but it’s often HORRIBLE, NEW, AWFUL, LIFE-CHANGING NEWS TO PEOPLE RECEIVING THEM. Don’t make us wait! I’m so sorry and I’m so glad your cancer/kidney scares were negative! Thank you for reading my story.
DUDE.
I went through this when I was 20. In many ways I think it was much harder on my mother than it was on me – I was able to get everything scheduled around my college breaks and just kind of went on with my life, and she did all the worrying. But she also wrote her own story as a Cancer Mother, I think, to the point where 5 or more years later I was still getting random people at church asking me how I was feeling, which drove me nuts – for me that was all in the past. And if she hears of anyone else with a new diagnosis it’s “why don’t you call so-and-so, she could use to talk to someone.” OK, but I’ve never met so-and-so, what use will I be more than a decade later? These days we have google.
I guess I still don’t want any part of this granfalloon, for the most part. Every now and then I’ll see someone’s scar like a secret society symbol and we’ll exchange knowing glances – “you?” “yeah. you too, huh?” – but that’s as far as it goes. No walks, no ribbons (I don’t even know what color the ribbon is for this, although I’m sure there is one). Just my pill every day and my doctor’s visit once a year, where we talk about books and he chides me for not having my bloodwork done before I came in.
Yep, it’s pretty much the same for me, although if someone WANTS to talk to me about it, I’m ok with chatting…love the secret scar society! The ribbon is teal…no thanks.
I need to add to the tidal wave of “thank you for writing this” messages… it’s so well observed. I was diagnosed with breast cancer in April of last year and it seems like such a long time, I often feel like I’ve done all the thinking I need to do about it, and then writers like you put something in just the right way and it still clarifies things so well.
Thank you, also, for teaching me the word “granfalloon” – I will use that! That was exactly how I felt about all the support groups, and the assumption that I’d feel less alone if I struck up the odd conversation about chemo with a fellow “survivor”. Some of the friends who helped me the most had almost no experience of the disease itself – they’re just good people.
Granfalloon is SUCH a good word…I still can’t believe I found reason to use it in something I wrote. I hope you’re doing well these days; thank you for reading and for commenting! <3
Super prosaic bit of praise: thanks for putting the page break AFTER “I don’t have cancer any more” so I didn’t have to spend five minutes stiffening sinews in order to proceed.
“like most people, I am more afraid of my mother getting cancer than I am of actually having cancer.”
I’m going to have to think about this. I think you are right. Why did I never realize that before? Now I have a new worry.
Thank you, thank you, thank you! Here I was thinking that I was a stranger in a strange land in believing that cancer is not a group project. I mean, really. I have thoughts of meetings being held by various friends, assignments given out, and posters made and ribbons tied on trees. I can stop worrying about what color my parachute is because I need to find out what color my ribbon is. I cringe. I recoil. I smile. But thanks to you I now have a verb for it: Stop granfallooning me!
Right on! Thank you for saying so, and I’m happy to have helped a fellow anti-joiner; I hope you’re doing ok!
This is the only essay about cancer I have ever liked. Thank you.
Welp, I just made that my GChat custom message, so thank YOU.
Great, great post. I also had a call from the doctor’s office telling me that my results were back and I needed to make an appointment to see the doctor about them… but that appointment couldn’t happen until after the weekend. So I spent the entire weekend thinking, ‘well, if it were the most terrible cancer, they would want me in Emergency straight away, right? RIGHT?!!’ (And it was fine, and I just needed antibiotics. Of course).
And I’m so glad you had the support of your mother. She sounds just awesome.
Thank you! Why do they do this thing?! Just tell us! I’m glad you’re ok. Yes, my mom is a wonderful lady and I am lucky!
Great, great post. I also had a call from the doctor's office telling me that my results were back and I needed to make an appointment to see the doctor about them… but that appointment couldn't happen until after the weekend. So I spent the entire weekend thinking, 'well, if it were the most terrible cancer, they would want me in Emergency straight away, right? RIGHT?!!' (And it was fine, and I just needed antibiotics. Of course).
And I'm so glad you had the support of your mother. She sounds just awesome.
There is nothing more I can say here that has not been said, but this was beautifully written and infinitely relatable. Your battle with anxiety, your lack of interest in being grouped, and your relationship with your mother were all such wonderful details that contributed to making you a Person, not a Person With Cancer. (Also, the way you phrased this was perhaps the most poignant sentence about moms that I’ve ever read: “I’m not sure why she thinks I would find this reassuring; like most people, I am more afraid of my mother getting cancer than I am of actually having cancer.”)
Thank you so much for sharing this with us.
Thank you so much, jenintheclouds…I *never* thought I’d write a Cancer Essay, so it means a lot to me that I came through as a Person, not a PWC.
I am woefully inarticulate today but your writing really touched me, particularly since I had a moment of compassion from a nurse I bumped into at my GP’s today (“You’ll be getting a letter, but your smear was fine”). I think they often don’t realise how much harm they do by making people wait for what people know or suspect to be adverse news – I know that I have spent far too many agonised days trying to squeeze test results out of consultants, only to be told that the radiologist has the results, but they haven’t been typed up yet, or have to go to my actual consultant who will announce them to me properly, or some such thing.
I like the sound of your mum – mine, too, has her sources, and is always sure I’m going to be okay, in a way that I wish for her sake I could live up to!
That nurse gets it; YES. “…[M]ine, too, has her sources, and is always sure I’m going to be okay, in a way that I wish for her sake I could live up to!” That is just it exactly; thank you for reading and writing!