The elderly couple walking arm in arm, one steadying the other, slowly, slowly, down the same path each morning as the sun rises. Children waiting, books beside them, clapping, Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack, all dressed in black, black, black, with silver buttons, buttons, buttons, all down her back, are interrupted as the school bus sighs mightily and comes to a momentary halt as it ushers them off to school. The bell rings and draw bridge lifts letting ships pass through. I watch the harbor beneath me and the lazy kind of hustle and bustle that is life on a barrier island. Every morning is the same, a rhythm that I’ve come to know and love. And the evening has its own rhythm, too. The man walking the brown speckled Great Dane, the woman in the park feeding the birds, the fisherman at the pier, the vagabond weaving tipsy steps as the shopkeeper turns his sign in the window to closed, please call again. The sound of the crickets chirping at night and the distant roar of the sea, a melody all of its own.
Not too long ago, I was afraid that I would have to leave this tiny town in order to work. Far away to the city, to traffic and smog and billboards and Starbucks and two a.m. traffic jams. How I would miss the sunsets and the salt air and all of the beauty that called me so often to the sea. But things changed and a few months ago I accepted a job (in a completely different field) that would keep me here, a job that I love with people that I now consider family.
I have been thinking about how well things have been lately, how the good has finally started to outweigh the bad, how life is finally turning out how I want it to be. I have been looking toward tomorrow, my 30th birthday, with mixed emotions - how it seems an entire decade was wasted struggling, pushing past one obstacle after another, but now I’m on the cusp of something new- something good. Things are finally coming together and I can feel life’s rhythm more than ever I could before. This will be the decade that makes up for it all. The decade that I find someone to love. The decade that I have children. The decade that is less about surviving and more about living.
Four days ago that rhythm came to a stop.
It started several months ago. I was sick and landed up in the ER. A ruptured ovarian cyst, they thought. I spent that night in the hospital with an IV of fluids and strong antibiotics and the next morning, they sent me home.
After battling the nightmare that is American health care, last month I was granted a follow up appointment with a doctor, who ordered more tests. Then one more test last Thursday, just to make sure they were seeing what they thought they saw. The same day, they called me and left two messages stating that I need to come in immediately, that they needed to discuss the test results with me, that more tests need to be done and that I need be referred to a specialist. I left work early on Friday to see the doctor.
The first thing the doctor asked me was if I have family to support me. I asked why she was asking me this and she said that I would need support through this…and then she told me that they had found a large mass on my ovary. I asked how big the cyst was. “No, it’s not a cyst, it’s a large mass,” she corrected me. I asked her what the difference was. “A cyst is like a blister. A mass is a growth,” she said. “Like cancer?” I asked. “We need more tests,” she said, avoiding me, “and you need to be seen by a specialist.” “Can I still have children in the future?” I asked. “I don’t know,” she said. Then she said, “I don’t think it’s the bad kind of cancer,” she said. “Are you saying I have cancer?” I asked her. And again, she said “We need more tests.”
By this time, I was irritated. Irritated by the phone call the day before telling me that I needed to come in immediately, and by her telling me that I would need support through this, yet as to what “this” is, all she is willing to offer is vague answers with words implied but not spoken.
“What does ‘I don’t think it’s the bad kind of cancer’ mean? Are you saying that you think I have a form of cancer?” I asked. “Yes, I do,” she said, and a moment later, “you need more tests. You need to be seen by a specialist and laproscopic surgery so that a biopsy can be done.” “It could be nothing, right?” I asked. “No, it's not 'nothing' it’s a large mass, and that’s not good. I don’t think it’s the bad kind of cancer, but I can’t tell you to go home and not worry about it, and I can’t tell you that everything will be all right. It could be something that requires surgery to remove and nothing more, but that mass could be something much, much worse.”
She shut the door after she left the room, but I could still hear her speaking to someone. “Put this on the chair so that she [the other doctor] will see it first thing Monday morning,” and ASAP something and then “Poor girl, she’s only 29.”
The rhythm that I finally called my own is gone and a new one has begun. This morning I watched as my hopes and dreams and everything I thought this coming decade would hold spilled forth in a crimson wave sealed in a vial labeled with my name and CA-125.
And so I remain, in limbo, not knowing the full scale of what’s going on, but knowing that the doctor knows something that I don’t. Knowing she won’t say flat out that it’s cancer, but that she believes that it is. Knowing that no matter what, cancer or not, it’s “something” and not “nothing,” but they can’t tell me just how bad that something is. Not knowing if I will ever be able to have children. And still, the doctor’s voice echoes in my head. “It’s a large mass, and that’s not good. I don’t think it’s the bad kind of cancer, but I can’t tell you to go home and not worry about it, and I can’t tell you that everything will be all right."
Rhythm, the big 3-0, and CA-125.
