One of my favorite suppliers was coming in to visit today, so I managed to get myself out of bed long enough to take a shower and head into work. Even though I had only missed a day and a half, it was nice to get back in. Nothing like a stay in the hospital to make you feel useless. Even though I was just going to be sitting through a 90 minute meeting it got the blood flowing again. When my boss saw me, he about ran me out of the place. I assured him it would just be for the one meeting, but after an hour my assistant grabbed me and walked me to my car. It’s nice to know they care, but it also felt good to get back to work for even just an hour.
It was about 5:30 that afternoon when my cell phone rang. It is a call that I will remember for the rest of my life, even if I only remember the first five minutes. You see, that was the call that brought up cancer for the first time.
Hogan said that he had received the results from the biopsy and although they were not conclusive, they certainly pointed in just a couple of directions. Don’t even ask me what the second direction was because as soon as he mentioned multiple myeloma, everything else became gibberish. It was just like the old cartoon where the dog owner is having a rather intelligent conversation with his dog and the only word that the dog understands is “Fido.”
The wonderful thing about the internet is that you have a world of knowledge at your fingertips. The bad thing about the internet is that you have a world of knowledge at your fingertips. It just so happened that I had my laptop open when the doctor called. Thirty seconds after multiple myeloma had been spoken, I knew that there was no cure. Needless to say, these were not the words that I wanted to hear. Never mind that Dr. Hogan had said that there needed to be more testing before we would know accurately. The all encompassing word had been uttered and it was the only word that mattered. My parents had died of cancer and there was a certain likelihood that I now had it.
Dr. Hogan was to call an oncologist and get an appointment set up as soon as possible. That was the end of the conversation and I was left to my thoughts. The boys had just gotten home from baseball tryouts and this was certainly not anything that we wanted to dump on them. So we went about our business as if the call had not come with the news that it brought. Dinner was dinner and the boys went on to do their homework and return to the lower level of the house never to be seen again. We knew that having the boys’ bedrooms on a different floor would make a difference, but half of the time, we don’t even know if they are alive. Probably not a bad idea for this night, however.
So much goes through your mind when you get news like this. “Why me?” is probably the most asked question. I’m 56, but have been in great health my whole life. I don’t smoke, drink or do any of the other things that typically bring you down this path. You can’t help but wonder how much time you have left. I felt I could deal with cancer, but if I only had months to live, I wasn’t sure I could handle that.
Julia and I talked for hours as we tried to reason what was happening between the tears that you unsuccessfully try to fight back. Even though it had not been confirmed, I truly felt that it was cancer. There had just been too much in my family’s background for me to miss it. Having Julia there was everything to me. How people can go through this alone, I’ll never understand. Even that first night gave me an idea of what she would mean to me and how successful I would be in fighting it. Finally, the weight of the day was lifted and I fell asleep.
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