Looking back now, it seems odd to me that they told me I could come by myself for the appointment.
Yep, come alone. We asked multiple times. Rachel was confident in driving down to the hospital and handling the follow-up, so I went to work thinking it was just another day.
I was sitting in this lovely brick building (with no cell service) and the Doctor is running about an hour and a half late. It’s no big deal because I turned in my resignation letter the day before and I can make up my hours this weekend.
“They’re running late”, she texts. No worries. I’ll get out of the office as soon as I can and take care of the monsters. Then we can celebrate cause it’s Friday and this appendix problem will be behind us soon.
It’s finally my turn to head to the back. Normally the Nurses are joking around with me, but today was different. They sent the Doctor and a different Nurse into the room to see me.
Without missing a beat, the Doctor says, “SO YOU HAVE CANCER.”
- HOW AM I GOING TO DO THIS?
- How can I have cancer in my mid-thirties?
- I just got married, am I going to live long enough to have children?
- I can’t leave my family just yet.
- I don’t want to die.
- Is this something I can tell my support network?
- How am I going to get through any phone call from my support network after I tell them I have cancer?
- Have I even lived yet? How can I start thinking about dying?
- I’m a terrible patient, do I really want to do another surgery?
- What if I need chemo or radiation? How can I just make this death spiral of horrible questions stop?