So it’s been a bit of a summer

So it’s been a bit of a summer.

In early July Adrienne messaged me asking if I had a minute and since I work from home unless I’m in the midst of something that I can’t break from I typically say sure. In this case, I had eight minutes until my next meeting and she said it was quick so I popped open a video chat.

 

Hey Mom just wanted to let you know that I’ve been having some headaches. With all the hormonal changes I’ve been experiencing I have lots of potential reasons for having them so it’s probably nothing. But when the doctor asked what my worst case was and I said brain mets she decided we should do a head CT to check it out so they’re going to do the regular MRI and the CT on the same day.

I flashed back to the 2019 phone call during which she looped me in when the investigative tests on the lump in her breast got to the point of them doing a biopsy. It was the same tone of voice, the same “it’ll be nothing” vibe she had then. However, that time it was a very big, very bad, very life-altering SOMETHING. I had to hang up because my meeting was starting but the blood drained out of my face so quickly that even with the weird lighting in my basement office Adrienne told me later she saw it before I shut down the chat.

My physical reactions to this type of thing are as predictable as the sun rising in the east. Even writing the words just now has brought on the ringing in my ears and nausea.  I joined the meeting but I wasn’t really present. How could I be? And as I sat there unable to take a full breath my thoughts ran back to the blog I wrote for Rethink in September 2023 about how despite how wonderfully Adrienne’s life was going there was this little voice in the back of my mind whispering “There will be a reckoning”.

 

I hate that my child’s life, that MY life, rests firmly on a continuum where I can never truly trust that anything good won’t be balanced by the universe tossing a pie in my face as it smugly walks out the door. I wish I could live differently but I can never be as unprepared in my life as I was when I heard “Mom…it’s cancer” five years ago so I have to let it in. I have to acknowledge the possibility that a headache is not just a headache. That a test will not have the result I want it to have. That my child’s body will betray her once again.

I hate this disease.

The result from the CT came back first. No sign of cancer. I sobbed with relief for a bit but that little voice reminded me that the MRI result was still in the balance. I stepped back into the disassociated state I’d been in for weeks because it’s sometimes the only way I can function because I live with five other people and I don’t have the luxury of hiding under a blanket.

This past weekend there was a family celebration at my home for my husband’s birthday and our anniversary (one the day after the other because he is seven months younger than me and I refused to marry a younger man). Adrienne opened up the app she’s been checking every day for the MRI results and pumped her fist in the air as she shouted BI RADS 2…and I slumped to the floor of my kitchen in loud, messy tears. It didn’t matter that the house was full of company because in that moment a weight I had been carrying for six weeks eased off my spirit and I could no more control the outward expression of my relief than I could make the sun rise in the west.

As Adrienne sat down on the floor to put her arm around me she calmly explained to the others in the room what that result meant. The surgeon had told her that she would never get below a BI RADS 3 and yet there it was, in glorious black and white. A great…glorious…shining…BI RADS 2 nothing.

I know it’s a right-now nothing. I know I will continue to be on the continuum, to live my life in three or six or twelve month increments until the next test comes along. But for now, for this moment, I will allow myself to breathe in a little bit of the joy that comes with the fact that it was my turn to throw a pie this time around.

And I’ll give myself a little bit of time to feel smug about it.