There are two things I genuinely appreciate about the UK medical system. The first is the fact that medical staff are extremely polite, and appear to care about their patients. They even have the decency to look sad when they deliver bad news.
The second is a related point: when you are obligated to have tests like, say, a pelvic ultrasound, the raw data is delivered immediately. There is no delay while assorted professionals evaluate information.
The nice woman wielding the wand of doom yesterday afternoon pointed to the image of my right ovary on the monitor and said I’ve never seen anything like this before with a puzzled and concerned expression.
Of course not. It is, after all, my body.
My annual Big Cancer Scare is generally not very interesting. It happens too often and I usually just feel annoyed. But since I recently decided to possess and exercise appropriate (some would say normal) emotions, I spent all of yesterday feeling a sort of mild terror.
Or at least observing myself attempting to feel scared; I’m still learning, after all. It is sufficiently difficult to remember that any of it is true.
Byron (along with many of my friends) takes the position that I am like a cockroach and can’t be killed; a brief consultation with him yielded the further wisdom that if I have a new and lethal cancer, at least I’ve had fun along the way.
I’m not a big fan of sympathy so I didn’t bother to mention the matter to anyone else, aside from involving Gabriel in a quest to find the phone number of my stateside oncologist as I have conveniently forgotten the name of not only the doctor but also the hospital.
I shed a few self-pitying tears, berated myself for crying, and went out to dinner. Then I watched that double episode of Wonder Woman featuring Debra Winger as Diana’s ditzy younger sister.
I walked into the appointment this morning fully prepared to hear bad news. Imagine my surprise then to hear a doctor informing me that the thing described by the technician is no cause for worry. In fact, piecing together the facts, it is probably a scar.
The growth that was under surveillance three years ago has vanished.