I hate scans. Tests. Waiting for answers and diagnoses and results. All the stories I have about waiting cram into my thoughts like jockeys trying to be the first to be told.
Numerous pregnancy tests when we were trying to get pregnant with our first baby. The excitement of trying and hopes & dreams of growing our family. The heartbreak of every missing blue line.
Numerous Covid tests that need 15 minutes to tell you if you can leave the house that week. Seriously? 15 minutes? When I had Covid it showed up immediately as I sat on the floor, holding the end in my hand. But whatever, you do you CDC.
I had a mammogram last year and the scans showed "irregularities." But "it could be nothing, you've never had a mammogram for us to compare it with," the nurse tried to console the panic in my voice over the phone.
An ultrasound was scheduled for 2 weeks later. I tried to control my breathing as I put a hospital gown over my jeans. I tried to breathe naturally as I lay on the table in the dark watching lines and texture make out an outline of my chest. Remember the last time you had an ultrasound? My mind tries to distract me. You were looking at Paige and her pre-birth grump of a face as the technician tried to get some pictures! That was a good scan!
But that was so long ago.
What about all of Bob's tests and scans?
Now I feel my shoulders tense.
"All the testing confirms what we said before- he has cancer. It's in his bones, and that makes it stage 4 cancer."
Sometimes the events you remember the most are ones you wish you could forget. Or at least you could remember on your own terms, not unbidden late at night or when you're lying mostly topless on a medical table.
Because all he's felt was back pain. And some nausea from medicines given for what everyone thought was a pulled muscle or two. But no. Spinal fractures because a cancer we knew nothing about was eating into his bones caused the back pain. And the only reason it was found was because his doctor took a scan for possible pancreatitis.
"We're sending him to the hospital because he has pancreatitis. But we're really concerned about lesions across his abdomen that look like cancer."
I was alone hearing both these statements. I was standing in the parking lot of daycare about to pick up the girls for the last one, and sitting on Bob's hospital bed while he slept full of painkillers for the first.
So far none of my scans show cancer. With 8 billion people in the world I figure my chances are slim. But so were Bob's. And so were Heather's, and Dave's, and the other Dave's, and my uncle's and my Grampa's and my granny's. It happened to all of them, that diagnosis. And it will keep happening. And it will be found by a scan.
Does this mean I'll never trust scans or doctors? No.
Reality is unknown. And we have to learn to accept that and somehow keep our sanity. I wish I had an upbeat way to end this, like all the hacks and tricks I use to make myself move through the day. But I don't when it comes to scans. I just force-breathe my wait through it. Scans are a useful tool that helps us see our body internals with concentrated radiation.
And then we have to decide how to live with the results
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