The New Year’s Sweetest Words : Being logical goes out the window and being ridiculous starts to make sense when awaiting the results of a biopsy.
A gathering of friends at dinner, we’re on our third glass of wine, everyone is mellow. The host, a European partial to ceremony, has proffered a question fitting the year’s end that he wants us to answer: What was the happiest moment of 1995? We go around the table, one by one. Each guest speaks, some hesitatingly, some with gusto, naming the moment, doing a riff on why: a new grandchild, a streaked summer sky in Texas, a mathematical apercu (my husband’s, and no, he wasn’t kidding.) My own answer didn’t fit because it was too short, two words that required no explanation: negative biopsy.
It came early last month, my biannual cancer scare, familiar to those of us who have been through it and yes, I know, to many who haven’t. A scare is a scare, although it’s somewhat different for those of us who have been hit before. That’s because when you get scared you talk to yourself. You say, “Hey, I’m being ridiculous, this can’t happen to me” and it usually turns out you’re fine and you were being ridiculous. But if, on one of those occasions--or on more than one--it was cancer, then, when it looks as if you might have it again, you can’t accuse yourself of being ridiculous with the same verve because that last time you weren’t being ridiculous at all.
The onsets of these scares vary, except in one respect: You don’t expect them. When you feel a twinge, a little pain somewhere, and think, could it be? It almost never is. The first year out after my first cancer and again after my second, I thought every cold was cancer of the nose, every touch of indigestion cancer of the lower intestine. My husband helped. “Don’t be silly,” he’d say. “You ate too much.” I like that. He still does it. It means I can ask him out loud without keeping it to myself and letting it take root. “Do you think I have cancer of the knee?” I ask him. He looks up from his German text on number theory and says, “No, you fell down, remember?”
Funny thing is I never get nervous before a check-up. I’ve never gotten a cancer report at a predictable time like that, so I’m not afraid of examinations or tests. This time, though, during what I expected would be a “routine sonogram,” the doctor said, hmmmm in a way that got my attention, followed by “There’s been a big change here.” If you’ve had cancer, “change” is not a word you ever want to hear. I took in the word and the somber tone and felt all of the blood leave my body. I was supposed to sit up and hear more about the “change,” but couldn’t.
Why can’t these people do that better? I think it’s more stupid than mean. They don’t know how it sounds to the person lying down. They don’t think about that. Well, I guess that’s not fair. Some do. Many do. But not this guy.
A few days later, I had a “procedure” --the with-it word for small operation--plus biopsy. When I woke up, the surgeon said everything looked OK. That beat “cancer’s all over the place.” Still, I knew it could be hiding and that only the biopsy would say for sure. While waiting to hear, I played the don’t-be-ridiculous-game. Badly. I was much better at the get-ready-it’s-here-again-game. Being of a practical nature, I thought first of our nonrefundable air tickets to Jamaica. Would American Airlines give us our money back if I had cancer? If they would, do I care since I may die? (Just because I’m practical doesn’t mean I’m not also theatrical.) And should I go ahead and keep a frightfully expensive appointment at Kenneth to have highlights put in my hair if I’m going to lose it when I have chemotherapy? And shouldn’t I change my will? The friend who’s getting my jewelry doesn’t need it any more because her mother just died and left her lots.
I also played the hate-yourself game. That goes: How can you be such a wimp about something that hasn’t even happened (yet). Think about Bosnia. Think about abused children. Think about AIDS, for God’s sake, think about people to whom horror is happening now.
That helps for five minutes.
You share all of this only with those unlucky enough to be your husband or one of your best friends. Finally, you get the call. Well, you don’t exactly get the call. The truth is you’ve been doing the calling. They have the results, my doctor’s nurse has told me, but “they’re backed up.” Finally, they’re no longer backed up and I hear the magic words. And it’s springtime in December. Corny feelings burst into bloom: joy, triumph, kiss-the-ground gratitude. And as the New Year begins, you can’t help noticing you’re far happier than anyone you know.
