I'm now officially a model student when it comes to positioning myself on my custom-made body form on the radiation table. As my cancer twin S will likely attest to, it's stupidly important to please the techs who buzz around you like measuring robots every day. Today I was as close to perfect as I could be, with only some minor pulling of the sheet underneath me by my big bad techs.
I recognized one of the whitecoats at the main computer today but didn't realize until I'd left that it was one of the moms from Frances' daycare. Strange to think she may be peering over my chestal area sometime soon - bloody small city.
Pete was in the waiting room with the girls, chatting up the other patients and escorts. One woman was there from Los Angeles with her brother, who lives on Galiano Island and was in for two treatments today. Mamma mia. I won't be complaining about commute times again. Another woman was there with her husband, who was on cancer part two after 10 years in remission. She said he had cancer in his gums after living for years with ill-fitting dentures.
"Smoker?" Pete asked.
"Oh yeah!" the woman responded enthusiastically.
Tomorrow I meet up with Dr. R, my surgeon, for another consultation. I'm going to try to needle a surgery date out of her, but really I just want to talk out my options again, six months after seeing her the last time. One thing she said to me the first time I saw her keeps running through my brain. I hadn't received my official diagnosis yet, but she had looked at the preliminary MRI results and said it looked like cancer. I was crushed and started crying like a baby.
"Until you get the official results from your doctor, just try to live your life. Don't go on a juice fast if you're not on one already. If you jog already, go for a run, but don't start a new routine now."
Spoken like a person who has never been faced with the c-dawg herself. Because all you want to do (after all the wailing and depression and the moments of laziness) is to do absolutely everything differently. I wish I could have been with that Carissa in the examination room that day. I would have told her to just go with what her gut tells her to do and mark that day as stage one of a kind of rebirth that will continue to confound, piss off, inspire and excite her six months later.
Dr R is a fantastic surgeon, take my word for it, but as a listener and an advisor, I don't know if she qualifies. However, I can imagine why surgeons act the way they do ... they don't want their emotions to get in the way of doing a good job in the operating room ... no questions there about Dr. R, she is one of the best. Say hi for me and tell her I'll be watching ... heh heh heh.
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