Terror, Elation and Humility

23 June 2020

Trust me, I would never wish a cancer diagnosis on anyone.  When a person in a white coat comes to you and says, “Mr. Todd, I am afraid I have some bad news, you have cancer,” the world comes off the rails.  You sweat, your stomach fills with acid, the room zooms around you and you start thinking about things like God and the kids and I don’t want to die. Then you are numb like someone has hit you square on the front of your brow with a two by four.  You lurch from moment to moment and if you are like me you sleep is just absolutely destroyed.  At 3 a.m. you are questioning everything while laying upon sheets soaked in your copious sweat.

This phase is terror level one.  There are other levels of terror, like when you are laid out on the gurney with the saline drip in and people are saying things like, “We will take good care of you.”  No matter how you stack it up you know that when you come out of that operating room you are going to hurt.  You don’t know if it will go well and if they will get it all. Maybe, you call this terror level two.

Assuming all went well you suffer for a long, long time as the cuts and incisions heal up.  You take lots of Tylenol and you wonder if you will ever go back to work.  And then you get ready for the follow up visit with your physician a month post-surgery and your nerves are on edge, what will the doctor say?  This is kind of terror lite.  When the doctor nods and says we think we caught it all, this level fades.  Trust me it doesn’t disappear; it just recedes into the background.

Later, (in my case six months later) you have to do a follow up. You may have to do blood work.  You may have to do MRIs or PET scans or other imaging. The folks that bring you in have their poker faces on. Those poker faces stay on the whole time you are talking to the techs from when you enter the room until you put your clothing back on and walk out the door. 

As the time passes from the actual testing until you have your follow up conversations with your doctor you create timelines.  My most recent timeline was this. “Okay, so they did the imaging on a Friday afternoon.  The radiologist probably won’t look at the images until Monday.  Okay, after the radiologist looks at it on Monday the drafting of the report will take until Tuesday. My doc and his staff won’t see this until at least midday Tuesday, so it won’t post to the web portal until Wednesday. So, I can just push the panic back until Wednesday morning.”

Monday afternoon comes and suddenly, a long-distance number that you know belongs to your doctor’s office starts ringing on your smartphone at 5:20 p.m. Your stomach drops and your testicles move up into your chest. A little bit of sweat is forming on your hands and forehead and you slide the bar over on the touchpad and you say weakly, “Hello”.  This is terror dulled but it is as real as it was in the first conversation where the doctor was sorry but …cancer.

Your breath escapes and you have to gasp a little bit to respond when the nurse says, “Is that you Mr. Todd.”  And you jumble up your words as you say you are guessing the test results are back.  Then the nurse says, the MRI was unremarkable, there is no sign of cancer.  You sit quietly thanking God, trying to get a centering breath, trying to understand.  The nurse asks if you are still there and you acknowledge that you are and you thank her and silently you feel a weight just drop off.  

For a moment there is just the slightest bit of giddiness. But having had cancer before you know that giddiness is not warranted.  Respectful joy is what is called for.  You let those good results turn the valve that lets your soul calm just a wee bit.  You physically feel your tense muscles unwind and go lax.  A few moments of elation can be countenanced.

Having had cancer before you know that this is not the end.  There will be six-month checkups for years.  There will be a constant self-monitoring, wondering if every anomaly of physical sensation is a clue of a recurrence.  There might be vile medicines and further painful procedures.

Then you think of every person you have known and loved that has suffered from this horrible group of diseases.  You contemplate your luck at not having to undergo some of the treatments they have had to endure.  You think about those you know and who mean so much to you that are still fighting.  You think of those that have passed.

Humility follows reflection. You got lucky.  You had aggressive providers to watch over you.  The ball broke you way in finding your path to the right surgeon at the right hospital.  Dumb luck or divine intervention, either way you had nothing material to do with the outcome.  You didn’t work your way to here.  You have simply received a blessing.  Humility is what is called for, humble is what I am.  With that humility comes the peace of a relieved mind.