Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Six years ago tonight, at this moment




I was 1 hour into the surgery that would bring me my son.
Tonight we celebrated by visiting the 4th level of hell. Chuck E Cheese. Which is infinitely better on a Wednesday evening than on a Saturday. I'm just sayin.

And when they wheeled me into the operating room, I seriously turned to the nurse and said "oh good, we'll be back in the room before West Wing starts." They must have given me different drugs than they told me. We didn't make it for West Wing. I think we finally got settled back in the room about midnight. And I was just thinking tonight that that night was the warmest I think I've ever felt in my life. Not "warm" as in hot but "warm" in the sense that it was just about the coziest, most content feeling imaginable. Must have been the drugs again.

A few weeks back when Elizabeth Edwards held the press conference to announce that her cancer had returned, one of the things she said that stuck with me most was that things hadn't changed that much for her, she just now knew what she would die from. So, since I was about twenty I've pretty much believed that I'll eventually die from skin cancer... assuming that I avoid the random plane crash, becoming shark bait, or being killed by debris falling from a sky scraper. Still, it's always somewhere off in the far distant future when I'm an old lady and unlikely to care much what kills me.

That's poor justification for skipping my screenings but I did. I finally scheduled one to deal with another issue and I didn't expect much except for the standard lecture that I can't afford to be so careless. I had a positive test a few years back. And several pre-cancerous spots since. But still. I did not expect his grim silence as he looked at my back 3 seconds into the exam. He did say he doesn't think it's at Stage II yet. And I'm clinging to that hope. But I've never seen him look like that before. So I'm trying not to freak out and succeeding at intervals.

Can't believe my baby is 6 today. Actually glad I have something else to think about besides that!



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