Currently This

My doctor called me this afternoon. My regular one, anyway. Who knows what the gyno is off doing? When she called, my heart sank. I figured, god, if she's calling on Sunday, they must have found something else and it's worse.

But nope. She was just calling to say she didn't know why they had denied the breast ultrasound but she's resubmitting. That's good to hear. She thought it was 'outstanding' that I had gotten the auths for the biopsies and scheduled the tests so quickly. Do enough women hear they may have cancer and ignore it that it's outstanding when one fights to get it dealt with right away, or do I just seem particularly wimpy to her, so she's surprised at my standing up for myself? She did say that what they are doing isn't looking to confirm cancer per se, but looking to see how far it has spread.

That's a dandy thing to hear when you're up to your elbows in latex gloves and solvent, trying to get the stickum from duct tape off your bedroom window. So, you definitely think it's really cancer, and not just 'pre' cancer? She says. well they won't know for sure until they do the biopsies but yeah, something is definitely going on there. She mentions again a hysterectomy, I ask about epidurals vs. local anesthesia, she says we'll talk after we get the results of the tests.

I'm trying to stay upbeat about this. I keep trying to tell myself that nothing is definite, even if it is true, the survival rate is excellent if caught early, etc., but what keeps coming back to me is an episode of 'thirtysomething' when Nancy and Elliot are talking about survival rates. Nancy's telling him that in a study, those who did x lived longer than those who did not, and Elliot says how great that is, how hopeful, and Nancy says you don't get it. They lived longer, but they all died. If I catch this at stage 0, it's a 100 percent survival rate. Stage 4a, and it drops to 20-30%. They don't even give a rate for 4b.

I'm trying to stay positive, but I'm really scared. I sit and think, god don't be scared, if you let yourself be scared, it's like letting it be true. If you stress, you could make it worse. If you think about it, you let it be true, the only way for it not to be true is if you refuse to give it headroom. But there's no way not to give it headroom, not to think, to worry, to obsess. It's impossible not to be afraid and think about things like dying under anesthesia and what happens to the kids and how do I hide it from them if I have to have surgery.

I'm trying not to be pissed, too. According to the link I found the other day, most cervical cancer starts with HPV, a sexually transmitted virus. That means it probably started way back when my ex-husband was sleeping around with his bimbo and coming home to sleep with me, too. Wouldn't that be the cherry on the cake of that relationship? And I've had a really tough few years. I don't mean to pass a buck crawling with germs or anything, but isn't it someone else's turn, yet?

I'm thinking I ought to get my ex to sign over his parental rights so Lyle can adopt the kids in case something happens to me. I'm thinking we should have gotten life insurance on me a long time ago. I'm thinking I don't want to have cancer, I have kids.

On a positive note, Lyle, who did have cancer at one point, had a physical and is still clean.