When you expect the going to get tough, take your sweetheart to the Oregon coast. That would be my advice to anyone facing a likely cancer diagnosis. And here we are, doing the stuff we love to do. Walk, hike, wade through February mud— a perfect coastal day.
PET scan happened yesterday. They shoot you up with a radioactive isotope, then they make you lie around for an hour— no music, no reading, no nuthin’— so your brain doesn’t get too excited. The active cancer cells absorb all the goodies and that will glow green on a screen. Being that I’d arrived there at 7 a.m., I went to sleep. Then, when they brought me into the tube, I dozed off again. All in all, my PET scan was a refreshing experience.
After, I asked to see the images. The big green blob in the middle of my chest waved hello. I didn’t see green in my brain; let’s hope this week’s brain MRI shows the same nothing. Gotta say, I am so curious to see those pictures.They will be taken with and without contrast, so I imagine there will be colors involved. I hope I am not so wasted on Valium that I forget to ask. (All The Drugs, remember?)
Mr. Lung Doctor sent his official notes to my file. He totally wussed out. “The pattern [big mass + enlarged nodes] is concerning, but not diagnostic, of bronchogenic cancer.” I know, I know— maybe it’s not. M says he gets to pretend it’s something bizarre until all the information is in. And, I suppose it’s possible that it’s not the Big C. (is There’s a saying that’s coming to mind— something like, that’ll happen when….)
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| Pig, flying. |
I’m mostly OK. Then, every once in a while, I can feel myself get all jangly inside. The world recedes and I want to stop in my tracks, curl up like a whimpering pup, and hide. It happened a couple of miles into our walk today. OK, I remember thinking, I just need to go home. Now. Well, that certainly wasn’t going to happen— we had all this mud to wade through to even get to the car. So I just kept walking. Not too long after, I realized I had walked myself out of it. No more jangled up feeling, no more out-of-touch world. The old growth forest, the ferns, the waist-high salal bushes, all suddenly vivid green.
I guess that’s the secret. Just keep walking.
