Rear View Mirror

It’s been a while since I’ve published a blog post – Almost a year actually.  Back in 2021-2022, I published every week for almost 100 weeks.  Then, I stopped.  In 2023, there were four blog posts.  Now, almost half a year into 2024, I present you with my first blog post of the year.

Back in January, I visited an allergist.  I had been having trouble with a persistent cough for over six months.  When I visited my GP, I told her I might have allergies, and she referred me to an allergist.  After the allergist went through the normal allergy tests, we discovered I am allergic to tree pollen.  But here it was January in Utah, and there’s no tree pollen floating around.  So what’s up?  The allergist decided to do a chest x-ray.   The x-ray revealed that I had a nodule growing on my lung.  Around 50% of adults have nodules growing on their lungs, and it’s no big deal.  But this nodule was bigger than the “no big deal” variety.  They decided to do a CT scan.  The CT scan showed similar results, so the allergist decided to treat me with inhalers and try the CT scan again in two months.

Two months later, the CT scan showed the nodule had grown 27%.  Hearing this news, I felt frightened.  What was going on in my body?  What was this nodule, and why was it growing?  I then had some blood tests and a PET scan.  Reading those results, the allergist referred me to a lung surgeon.

The lung surgeon looked at all of my tests and recommended I have the nodule removed.  He wasn’t sure what it was, and he was almost certain it wasn’t cancer.  He said, “If I was in Las Vegas, I would bet this isn’t cancer.”  My concern diminished and now I just wanted the sucker out.

On April 19th, I went in for scheduled surgery.  That One Guy (TOG) was with me, supporting me every step of the way.  He even managed to stay upright as they poked me 4 times to find a vein suitable for an IV.  He said goodbye as they whisked me off to surgery.  He held the bag with my stuffed support bunny while I was in surgery.  He was there shortly after I woke up.  Then he met me at my hospital room when they brought me to my final hospital destination.

TOG and I were in the room, him in a chair and me on my hospital bed.  I was pretty out of it and definitely awake.  In what seemed like just a few minutes later, my surgeon joined us in the room.  My memories are fuzzy.  I had been in surgery for 4 hours, and I was hyped up on the last of anesthesia and the new pain medication being pumped into my system via an IV.  The surgeon came in to see me and see how I was doing.  Then he dropped the news.

“The nodule we took out of your lung turned out to be a melanoma.  I also removed the rest of the upper right lobe (where the nodule lived) and thirty-plus lymph nodes.  We want to be sure we got all the cancer that might have been inside your lungs.  I won’t have the pathology on the additional pieces for a few days.  We will be calling you when we get the results.”  Then he left.

I think I actually knew everything he told me before he said it.  I think TOG had told me.  But as I said, the memory was blurry.

When I got this information, I don’t remember having any emotions about it.  I was pretty numb.  You could say I was numb from the medications or the fact that getting up to go to the bathroom required 2 members of nursing staff to help me navigate with a drainage tube, an oxygen tube, and an IV.  I think I was probably in shock.  The fact that I have (or was it had?) cancer was not a fact I was absorbing.

I spent the next few days in the hospital.  I was poked for blood every morning at 4 AM.  On the second day, my drainage tube was removed.  I went for my first walk down the hall.  I figured out how to maneuver in and out of the toilet on my own.  Physical pain, weakness, and tiredness were my biggest challenges.

On the third day, I got to go home.  No more 4 AM blood tests.  No more pushing a button whenever I needed help.  I was sent home with oxygen.  I was surprised: the surgeon made no mention of my needing oxygen post surgery when I went for my consultation.  I didn’t even think to ask about it.   A concentrator was installed in my home.  This gadget pulls oxygen from the air and pumps it into a breathing tube.  I was given a 39-foot tube that I attached to the circulator.  That allowed me to wander around the house pretty freely.  I also received some oxygen tubes and a wheeled device to hold them in.  That way I could leave the house.  The seriousness of my situation started to sink in.

Then I got a text from my son.  He was telling me how a mutual friend texted him to ask how he was handling the seriousness of my condition.  In his reply, he said to her, “Life is a gift, and I’m thankful for every day I have with my mom ❤️”  When I read that message, I broke down.  I cried.  I realized that this finding was serious.  I was now a cancer patient.  Cancer, especially lung cancer, has such an ominous ring to it in our society.  I wasn’t prepared for this diagnosis.  Is any cancer patient?

In that moment, I truly felt the precious gift of my life.  I wondered about the people most important to me.  Did they know how much they meant to me?  What was the last thing I said to my children?  My kids?  TOG? My friends?  How about some of the random assholes in my life?  They were important also.

What about what I was doing with my life?  Was it fulfilling enough?  Granted in this moment, the most fulfilling thing I could do would be to breathe into my spirometer and get the ball to rise to a 1000 ml mark.  I’ve been retired for the last six years.  I’m grateful for the life I’ve lived and the adventure I’ve brought into my life.  But is it enough?  Was I playing too many word games on the premise they would help my brain?  Word games used to help me relax when I was married and the stress was high.  What stress did I have now (well before finding out my life may be cut short by disease)?  Did I have a reason to not be reading a book, creating art, writing blog posts, or doing some other activities perceived as constructive?

The next few days I spent healing.  I will be spending many more days healing, but these were the first ones at home with my new feelings of, “This is it.  There are no do-overs.”  I broke down talking to my therapist.  I cried looking at pictures of my kids.  I spent time wondering what I was going to do with my, “one wild and precious life” that Mary Oliver speaks of.  I tried to act more deliberately.

I started looking at my calendar and removing things I didn’t think would help me right now; they were just making more stress.  No trip to Moab in May.  No booth at the August Arts Fest.  Emails starting to pile up?  Delete them.

Then just 2 nights after the text from my son, my surgeon called.  He had good news:  While they had confirmed the cancer on the lung nodule, there was no cancer in the rest of the lung lobe, nor in the lymph nodes he had removed.  The other parts of me were cancer-free.  That said, he was still having me get a full body scan at my dermatologist, get an MRI of my brain, and meet with an oncologist.  Those appointments have been scheduled for early May.  Still, it felt like the initial ominous message I had digested just 2 days earlier seemed to be at bay.  It was as if a vehicle with the message of, “This is it.  There are no do-overs” was now driving past me and headed into my rear-view mirror.  I could go back to my regular self, the one who wasn’t fixated on making the most of my life.  Word games would be okay again.

The next day I was breathing easier, or as easy as one does with a breathing tube under their nose.  An urgency weight had been lifted.  At the same time, I kind of liked the urgency weight.  I liked the idea of being deliberate and more self-aware.  It was also exhausting.  At least now, I was giving myself the option of finding a happy medium.  The vehicle may have passed, but I could still see it in that rear-view mirror.