I am notorious amongst friends and family for blithe indifference to certain kinds of danger, particularly the sort that threatens my health.
Sure, I’ll stop drinking coffee if it hurts my tummy, give up sugar when it causes a rash, buy organic and local when doing so seems prudent. I’ve never smoked or used recreational drugs, I ride a bicycle everywhere – I could be the poster child for clean living.
But I have lived with chronic pain and incapacitating illness so long I regard both with benign indifference. There isn’t much that could surprise me, and I really can’t be bothered to have any emotions about the whole thing.
The recent session with the geneticist did not strike me as particularly illuminating, mainly because I did not want to think about what happened at the end of the appointment.
We had already discussed the assorted referrals (including sending my kid off to visit the cardiologists) and I was vaguely looking around, preparing to depart.
The expert on familial cancer leaned back in her chair and informed me that when she reviewed the chart she would have thought I had an entirely different genetic disorder.
Except, she went on, the presentation of skin cancer absolutely confirms the diagnosis. The trouble, the mystery, is how or why I simultaneously also had a virulent primary and unrelated cancer, since nobody else with the genetic disorder has ever presented with those symptoms in combination.
Especially not at age twelve, and more precisely, not in the accelerated and bizarre manner my disease announced itself.
The geneticist went on to say it would just be rotten luck to have two dominant disorders. On top of the sundry minor traits transmitted down the family lines.
True, though as I responded, I’m already deeply unlucky, with the DNA profile of a cesspit.
This might be a philosophical question, but which is better – to know and name the trouble, or to remain mired in mystery?
I gave up asking why why why approximately twenty years ago, and while I blinked in astonishment over the suggestion of an additional diagnosis, failed to even take note of what it is called.
Instead I asked How would my treatment change if I had this too?
She said that they would do frequent thyroid monitoring, but I’ve already had that organ hacked out. She went on that they would test for cancers of the reproductive system, but I’m well stuck in that routine based on symptoms.
Nothing else would differ, except I would have yet another pre-existing conditions mark against me in the great cosmic quest for health insurance.
Hurray for me.