A year ago (Part 2)

Please bear with me as I write a few more grey entries about this one-year anniversary of my diagnosis. I am in remission now and feeling great. Things are good, but I must take time to reflect on this milestone.

Now with a year of reflection under my belt, I see that the darkest, blackest moment of cancer survivorship is when one is first given the cancer diagnosis. In everything I have read and experienced, this dreadful moment gets seared on the cancer patient’s mind. The good thing is that the cancer story gets better after you are first given the news….at least if you are a survivor.

On October 26, 2007 at Baylor Hospital in Dallas, I had a liver biopsy on the big, dense mass that took up more than half of the space in my liver. At this point we were all tiptoeing around the word “cancer.” This is a charged word and no one wanted to say it.

I remember lying on the stretcher in the recovery wing of the hospital. I was starting to regain consciousness after the biopsy. I was aware that David was in the room with me. I was barely awake, but I could tell he was restless. I could hear him standing up, walking around, fiddling with my covers, moving the chair, and sitting down again. This is unusual. David usually just sits and reads quietly. Usually I only hear him turning pages.

With my eyes still closed, I sensed something was up. Even his breathing was different. I slowly opened my eyes and looked at him. He held my hand and said, “It’s cancer.” I closed my eyes again and turned away. I tried not to think.

This is what I wrote in my journal sometime in the middle of the night...


“The impossible, the unthinkable. The “it would never happen to me” just happened….Today a liver transplant specialist at Baylor Medical Center in Dallas told me that the pain in my abs (which I thought was the result of too many ab crunches :) is actually a malignant tumor. The tumor is 10 x 18 centimeters.

I am writing on the toilet in the hotel bathroom. It is the middle of the night. David is sleeping. We are staying the hotel located in the Baylor Medical Center.

I can’t believe it, yet I believe it. Perhaps I knew it?

I can’t help reviewing the past year, six months for clues. I go back over being sick at my stomach -- the nausea, the vomiting, the gagging. David wanted me to see a GI specialist. I remember the pain in my abs and the side. I go over and over all of this again-second guessing my previous behavior and thinking “if only.”

Then I attempt to think of the future, the ultimate deadline. I always work well under deadlines. I have so much I want to get done…all those projects that are so important to me. I basically have this driving need to get my things in order. Unlike everyone else in my family who has passed on, I don’t want to leave my droppings for others to clean up.

So, we need to start talking to oncologists. The plan is to attack with chemo. The good thing is that I am youngish (44) and relatively healthy. So they can make me very sick to kill the cancer. There is lots of room to work with. Great.

I, however, am a bit pessimistic. I believe the size of this thing will be hard to beat. It has gotten too much of a head start on me. Which leaves me with the unthinkable, the impossible, the ‘won’t ever happen to me’ possibility of an unexpectedly quick ultimate deadline.”