Cancer is Crap: No News Is… No Bad News

June 17, 2009 1:52 PM

My surgeon called. I passed the phone to my husband because I’ve learned from experience that when the doctor says anything other than “You’re absolutely fine!” I tend to start crying and stop listening.

He didn’t say I’m absolutely fine. But he didn’t say I’m not fine, either.  

Apparently the biopsy was inconclusive. The cells in my lumpy lymph node are not normal, but he can’t tell whether or not they are malignant.

This means I will have to have the lump surgically removed so that they can analyze it conclusively. It means we didn’t get the worst news, but neither did we get the good news we had been so desperately hoping for.

I wish he had given us a date for the surgery, because the waiting is excruciating. In fact if it hasn’t been scheduled by Friday I might lose my mind. In the mean time I’m trying really hard to focus on the chance that we still might get good news. (And the hope that I won’t have to wait forever to get it.) That mostly keeps the fears at bay and stops me from screaming or crying.

Mostly.