Mind Games

I called Mike and told him that I was going to need him to take Wednesday off and let him know that whatever the lump was, it wasn't a cyst. He agreed and I hung up to drive home.

Time alone is never good when you have worst-case scenarios going through your head. Things started coming at me at full force, how everyone had started calling me "Honey" or "Sweetie" once they realized I was being tested for cancer. How quickly everything happened-- the radiologist coming in, the scheduling, my doctor being PAGED and talked to within minutes of the discovery and then calling me moments later.

I started thinking about my horoscope. How it had said that Mike and I were going to come into a lot of money later in the year, and I started wondering if that was going to be my life insurance policy being cashed. How I was diabetic and a diagnosis of cancer would surely be akin to a death sentence. Megan and the fact that she wasn't even as old as the number of years we had tried to conceive her.

Over and over things rolled through my head.

Using the only information I had, that it was a solid mass and 7cm, I went online and searched for other possible causes for a lump, coming up with nothing that sounded like what was there. I searched cures for breast cancer, only to find that it isn't anywhere in the comforting level to know the survival rate.

I walked back into the living room and gave way to the hysteria, crying until my throat was raw and the world had taken on a numb reality.

I had to go pick Megan up from the sitter, so pulling myself together became tantamount to the duty at hand, and things started to get better. Mike came home and I gladly took the comfort he offered, glad that he always seems to know, in the height of bad moments, exactly what to do. And I spent a few hours just... being. Doing things so that my head would not spin wildly, wondering if I should go to the basketball game just to have something ELSE to do.

At 8pm, Kim called and I left to meet her.

Newberg is in first place in district for basketball. For the first time since I've been in Newberg (20+ years), the gym was full of people. There were so many bodies there that people had taken up residence on the floor. It was like a bad dream, I was watching a game, thinking about the possibility of my death, and still cheering for the players.

After the game, Kim and I sat and talked, waiting for the crush of people to leave. I told her how scared I was and how my mind was in overdrive. She told me that I needed to embrace courage instead and let God know that I was not ready to leave, that I still had work to do, and that NO! I wasn't ready. She told me it was probably nothing. I told her about my fear over the life insurance policy.

And she said, "Well, good God, I sure hope you increased the amount then!"

Which is why, in the middle of a high school gymnasium, with tears streaking my cheeks, I was laughing my ass off.

I love people that can always make you laugh when you least expect it.

My husband is really, really upset he didn't come up with that one on his own, but thought it equally funny.