Waiting

I am forced to wait for word from the Cleveland Clinic and their second opinion about my diagnosis. Clearly I won’t hear now, after 6pm on a Friday, until Monday. It is a place of unknowing about several things which are difficult to get my mind distracted from. 

Like, the possibility is high that I have a cancer that is definitely going to shorten my life but maybe I don’t. Maybe it’s very treatable. Don’t think about it, I tell myself.

And, even if it isn’t this cancer that 1 in a million people get in the United States each year, cancer has definitely returned to my body. So what is the treatment? My sense is probably a mastectomy, oh joy! It isn’t easy while falling asleep at night to push away images of what that will be like. Somehow I manage to and have been sleeping pretty good.

Then, when I’m alone in the kitchen preparing a nice dinner for the family, I can’t help but think about what their life will be like when I am no longer here. I’ve never had to really contemplate my death except in the abstract. It has always been just something in the future, 25 years down the road. My grandkids will be adults established in their lives. Yes, they will be sad, but it won’t be a huge impact. 

However, if this cancer is going to kill me early, oh the sadness I will leave in my wake. I shake away the thoughts and distract myself as best I can.

I wonder if my dear husband found himself thinking about what my life would be like without him. He knew he wasn’t going to live, he knew it when we made the decision to cancel our family plans for Christmas at Disney in Florida. He was gone six months later. I’m sure he thought about it, but I never thought about how he would be thinking about it. Now, facing a diagnosis with not a great 5-year survival rate, it’s amazing the thought processes that emerge.

While the stress of waiting feels interminable I know time ticks by and I will have answers soon enough.