It is now Sunday, May 10. It was Thursday when my doctor told me the results of the CT scan -- I had a suspicious mass on or near my left tonsil, and needed to see a specialist right away. And she mentioned the "C" word.
I had known for weeks the lump was there. She detected it during my annual physical by feeling and poking my neck. Back then it didn't seem so worrying. She sent me for an ultrasound, which proved inconclusive, so a CT scan on Tuesday was the next step.
She only got the results from the radiologist by fax when she was already with me in the examination room two days later. It seemed to me she was trying very hard to keep a poker face as she absorbed the report. That's when I knew this was likely to be very bad.
There is still hope --it seems we humans believe there is always hope, no matter how unsubstantial-- that it could be something else, some weird cyst or something like that. But I just don't believe it.
I spent nearly 40 years smoking, and only quit four months ago when a respiratory infection made it impossible for me to smoke and the Nicotine withdrawal was driving me crazy. I got the patches and was pleased by how well they worked. A few days later I was at my doctor's and she prescribed an anti-depressant that helps control cravings, and have only had a few cigarettes since, and none since February.
The specialists could not see me on Friday, so now it will be tomorrow. I work a graveyard shift, so lucky for me, I won't have to miss work, the life I have known will continue, at least one more day.
I have been very conscious, almost brooding, that this could be my last weekend as a normal human being. I had written my last normal weekend, but went back and struck it, that is not how it feels to me.
What I dread is not being dead, but dying, and perhaps even more than dying, the treatment to keep me alive: the torture of surgery, of chemo, of radiation therapy; not being able to eat; losing my ability to speak; being dependent after having been independent for so long.
I am now in my late 50's; from the age of 18, the second semester in College to be exact, until my mid-40's I never lived alone, not for more than a few months. I was involved in a succession of relationships, the last one lasting 12 years. We had --have-- two children, Carmen who is returning from her first year in College on Friday and I had promised to pick her up at the airport and I don't know if I will be able to, and Luke just finishing his freshman year in high school.
For the first few years after the breakup, the kids always spent two or three nights a week with me. This changed when Carmen entered high school. Yet Luke still came.
Now it seems the pattern is repeating with Luke. My ex's house is much larger and that's their main base. Luke has spent the weekend at my house only three or four times since the beginning of the year, and I was adapting to that, getting ready to dismantle "Carmen's" room and turn it into a small rec/guest room finally, although I had planned for Luke's to stay "his" for the foreseeable future. Except that now there is no foreseeable future.
Perhaps there will be a future I will know something about in a few days, but for now, I find my soul captured perfectly in a few lines from Auden:
Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.
No comments:
Post a Comment