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<b>
<font face="geneva, arial, helvetica, verdana, san serif" size="+2" color="#FFFFCE">
Take Your Lumps</font></b><br>
<font face="geneva, arial, helvetica, verdana, san serif"><a href="mailto:women@tripod.com"><b>by: spike gillespie</b></a></font></td>
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<td valign="TOP" width="25%"><font face="geneva, arial, helvetica, verdana, san serif" size="-1" color="#000000"><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br>
<a href="../../../../../www_subdomain/pod_central/pods/womenshealth.html"><b>Women's Health Pod</b></a><br>
Join the women's health community on Tripod — build a page, join a chat, and talk about everything from osteoporosis to infertility.
<br></font>
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<td align="LEFT" valign="TOP"><font face="geneva, arial, helvetica, verdana, san serif" color="#FFFFCE">
I pulled up to my house right as my guests arrived. They were a punk band from L.A. — Glue, replete with black drag queen lead singer — in town for South by Southwest, my city's annual hu-gantic music festival offering to the world.</font> <font face="geneva, arial, helvetica, verdana, san serif" size="-1">Not the first time I'd hosted people for the occasion. Nor the first time I'd hosted strangers (These folks were friends of my recently rediscovered, heretofore long-lost first cousin.) But it was the first time in
recollection that I did not immediately get down to the business of being the
perfect hostess, overdoing it in the doting department, and encouraging them to
help themselves to anything in my home.</font> <br><br>
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<td width="100"><font face="geneva, arial, helvetica, verdana, san serif" color="#FFFFCE">"Sorry I'm not in a better mood," I offered, voice cracking. "I just found out I have a tumor."</font></td>
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<font face="geneva, arial, helvetica, verdana, san serif" size="-1">
I couldn't. Could barely muster a hello as I fought the tears in my eyes
and the lump in my throat. Knowing what I had learned moments before in my
doctor's office, knowing that I had a lot of people to call to discuss the
matter with — and there was no way for my guests not to overhear — I made a quick decision to share the news.
<br><br>
"Sorry I'm not in a better mood," I offered, voice cracking. "I just found
out I have a tumor."
<br><br>
Looking back now, a year later, I can't imagine a better way to spend that
initial week digesting the news that, for all I knew, I might have cancer.
The band, surprised but undaunted, alternately carried on with their
original plans (party, party, party) and stopped to console me, to
entertain my son. ("Mommy, pleeeeeease can I stay up late and watch him turn
into a girl again?!")
<br><br>
If not for these guests, plus a few others who also set up camp as the week
progressed, I would've been alone. And I would've cried inconsolably. And,
if it is possible, I would've worried even more. Self-pity is not the best
or most admirable stance in the world but sometimes, I think, we are
justified in going there. The only problem — even in validated instances — is that the accompanying depression ultimately just makes everything worse.
<br><br>
A tumor. Imagine. My whole life the only other real physical problems I'd
had were a bum knee (and resulting minor surgery) in my late teens, and an
annoying weight problem for three years after my son's birth. For four
years preceding the tumor diagnosis, I'd been more fit than ever before,
having lost the weight and, in the process, grown addicted to daily
exercise. I looked good. I felt good. But I was sick. Maybe even really,
really sick.
<br><br>
I need to say here that there were several doctors and sonogram experts
involved in both diagnosis and prognosis. I must admit that each chose to
describe the thing growing in me with varying degrees of alarm or lack
thereof. Some would refer to it <b>only</b> as a cyst, a condition they assured
me not only was highly common, but also might very well clear up on its
own. One said, "Yes, it's a tumor. But technically, so are warts." I didn't
care though. Once the word "tumor" had been said in my presence, the
implications became inescapable in my imagination.
<br><br>
My primary doctor, a brilliant, young, funny ob/gyn, was most optimistic of
all. "Do you have time for cancer?" she asked me, noting the shell-shocked
look on my face when I met with her to come up with a plan to eradicate
this thing. "No," I mumbled. "Good, neither do I." She told me to go home,
wait it out, see if the thing shrunk or, better yet, melted back into my
body. (I know — ick — but, comparatively, better than being sliced open.)
<br><br>
It did not shrink, though. In fact, it grew, as did my fears. I did not
realize until much later — after surgery — just how frightened I had been. I made more than a few foolish and irrational choices in the weeks I waited
to find out an operation was definitely in order. Stayed up late, drank too
much, flirted recklessly with a stranger online. Somewhere my mind was
telling me, "You ARE going to live." Somewhere else, my mind was
whispering, almost inaudibly but on a constant loop, "This is it, all over.
Doesn't really matter what you do now because you won't live past surgery
to reap the fallout."
<br><br>
Of all my concerns, leaving my child alone in this world surpassed any
other. I would look at him and try not to cry or show my terror. God I love
that kid. Not to say that this incident suddenly awakened me to that fact.
There has not been a day in his life that I have not stopped and felt
blessed fully for this child's presence in my life. Pending doom merely
heightened that love, if such is imaginable. Sometimes I would look at him
and have to look away in agony. Other times, though he was in his, "I'm not
kissing you" phase, he, sensing something big, would come to me and
snuggle without prompting.
<br><br>
I told him, in terms he could understand, that I was having some problems.
Took him to meet the doctor, a single mother herself, who looked him right
in the eye and said, "I won't let anything bad happen to your mama." He
nodded silently. Like me, he waited months to acknowledge how shaken he had
been. (When a smaller crisis arose, I asked him if he was worried. "The
only thing that would worry me," responded my child, merely six at the
time, "is if you got another tumor.")</font>
<p align="right"><font face="geneva, arial, helvetica, verdana, san serif" size="+1" color="#FFFFCE"><a href="../../../../../www_subdomain/women/feature/columns/tumor/980701b.html"><b>NEXT PAGE</b></a></font><right>
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