The Push

           The decision to return to Auburn before my chemo treatments were completed was not one I made lightly. I knew from the very beginning that any number of things could go wrong from me simply not feeling well enough to do well in my classes to getting seriously sick over 300 miles away from the doctors attuned to the details of my condition. There is often a fine line between moving forward with a reasonable sense of confidence and just being flat out stupid, and I wanted to make sure I was not crossing that line. After many conversations with my doctor, however, it was clear that there were certainly risks involved, but not to the point that it would be considered a complete abandonment from my senses to go back. Knowing that, I felt good about getting my toes back in the water and making the first steps towards becoming a real-life functioning person again. I hadn’t considered how hard leaving home would be until I was loading the last of my things into the back of my car in the driveway. The last few months had been nothing short of a reliving of my pre-college life of living at home and completely relying on my parents to take care of me, perhaps even more profoundly than before. And now it was like I was leaving home for the first time all over again. I had to remind both myself and my parents that I would be returning every two weeks for the next month and a half anyway, so I think that at least helped soften the transition.

            The person who opened the door to my Auburn duplex five hours later was not the same person who had walked out four and a half months earlier. Somehow the rooms felt more open, the air seemed easier to breathe, and the insidious itching that had seemed to inhabit every nook and corner of the place had vacated the premises. When I lay in bed that night, the same bed I had spent countless sleepless nights, the profound beauty of what it is to be able to simply rest and feel a set of soft sheets beneath my fingers without feeling like I was lying on a nest of angry ants washed over me. Sometimes it’s only on the other side of something horrible that we can truly and profoundly appreciate the little pleasures of life, but the hard-earned lessons are ones we don’t soon forget.

One of the stipulations that my doctor and I had agreed upon before deciding I would return to school was that I would wear a mask to my larger classes in order to avoid at all costs getting sick while my immune system was in such a sorry state. Part of me wondered if anyone would recognize me between my lack of hair and surgical mask which covered my lower face. I’m not usually one to be overly-concerned with my appearance, but when the time came to actually walk into my first class, anxiety bloomed inside me like an unwanted weed. Not only did my inner middle schooler continually whisper that everyone was looking at me, I suddenly had the irrational fear that the professor would ask me to stand up and explain to the class why I felt compelled to wear a mask. Would people not want to sit next to me? Would they think I have some infectious disease? Despite myself, I had a flashback to the first day I walked into the cancer ward at Vanderbilt to begin my treatment. I remember seeing person after person wearing a mask and unconsciously feeling like I shouldn’t sit right next to them, almost as if they were really wearing a sign that read “Stay back.” Now, I felt like I was wearing the same sign.

Thankfully, reality proved much more understanding, and most people talked to me as if nothing were out of the ordinary to begin with. In fact, as the days went on, I sometimes I forgot I had anything on my face at all. Unfortunately, every two weeks served as a reminder of my condition when I had to return home for another round of chemo. The headaches, nausea, and lack of energy became relatively normal during those final six weeks, but some days proved more difficult than others. On those days, I had to rely on those closest to me to push forward and take the next step, even if that was only a word of encouragement or simply sitting and watching an episode of Breaking Bad with me. Six weeks doesn’t seem long in theory, but there were times when I thought it would never end.

But, it did.

February 14^th (yes, Valentine’s Day) marked the last time I walked into the infusion center to receive chemo treatment. As always, I spent the majority of the time reading a book or listening to music, anything to pretend I wasn’t there so I could just push through to the end. As the nurse was hooking me up with my final saline drip, I looked up to see my parents, sister, and nearly every person who had been a part of my treatment walking into the room carrying balloons, a sign, and even chocolate-covered strawberries to celebrate the moment. I was so caught off guard that it took me a moment to realize what was going on. This place that was normally a quiet, soft-spoken area where I came to essentially do my duty and move on was now filled with bright colors and smiles, with so many of the people who had been with me through the highs and lows of this crazy ride. I’ll spare you any unnecessary emotional sap, but suffice it to say waterworks were definitely involved and my heart felt about ready to burst for all the love and appreciation I felt. This center at which I had spent the last several months has a bell hanging in the hallway that leads out of the building, and it’s a tradition for a person who has gotten their final treatment to ring it on their way out. I can say with absolute certainty that ringing a bell has never given me the level of satisfaction that it did that day.

As much as I wish finishing chemo meant an instant return to normal health and a chia pet-like regrowth of hair, that was not the case. In fact, for the next two weeks I dealt with side effects as severe as they had ever been, many times to the point that I had to step out of whatever class I was in to either get sick or simply gather myself. I quickly realized that the push was not over even though it seemed like it should be by all rights. Time seemed to slow down, almost painfully so, as I woke up each day hoping this time I would get up and feel completely well. As week followed week, however, I finally began to notice an overall improvement in the way I felt, but even more exciting than that was the steady appearance of an unfamiliar sight in my bathroom mirror each morning: fuzz. Though unimpressive by any normal standard of follicular activity, the unmistakable return of my hair seemed like a physical mark of the transition from the hope to the reality that things were going to get better. I used shampoo for the first time in months simply because I could, even if it was a bit excessive for the meager pelt I was sporting. I also didn’t mind that my new addition seemed to induce the compulsion in others to pet my head like a dog. It proved difficult not to do the same myself since my new hair was noticeably softer than before.

As great as all this improvement felt, I knew that the PET scan I had scheduled six weeks out from my final treatment would be the real decider as to whether or not this progression back to “regular” life could continue or if there still remained a battle to be fought for the right to live in my body. Of course, given the enormously positive results of my first scan two months into treatment, we didn’t expect anything other than good news, but even a small “what if?” feels impossible to ignore completely. Somehow or another, the time finally came that I found myself sitting in a room alongside my parents, waiting for the doctor to arrive and deliver the news. I tried to not let myself get prematurely excited, but when I saw the smile on my doctor’s face as she walked in, relief washed over me like water on a parched throat. She then proceeded to show us how the mass in my chest, originally over 13 centimeters in diameter and engulfing one side of my heart, was now a meager few centimeters and showing no sign of cancerous activity. After letting the beauty of that news sink in for a few moments, we began to discuss how to move forward from here. My doctor explained that I would come in to be checked again about every six months for a couple years, and then we would reduce the frequency to once a year for a few years after that. If I still showed no signs of relapse after that time, it might even be possible that the term “cancer-free” could be used. As for the advice she gave me for moving forward, I’ll never forget it: “Just live your life completely normally. No more restrictions.” In all of medicine, I am confident that there exists no better combination of words to hear.

As my parents and I left to go celebrate with some Five Guys’ burgers, I finally let my tired mind accept what I had wanted to be true for so long. I didn’t have to push, to put my head down and only hope for the end of another day; I could just be. I’ve had a lot of great burgers in my day, but the one I had that afternoon may have been the best yet.

The Unmaking

            First, I must apologize for the gross amount of time that has passed between this post and the last. No excuses will mend my lapse of good blogsmanship, so let’s keep going and let bygones be bygones.

            I would be remiss to keep a Hodgkin’s blog without making note of one of the most visibly definitive experiences associated with cancer and chemotherapy: the hair loss. At the beginning of my treatment, the doctor told me my hair may only stick around for a week or two before bailing ship. Redheads have long been associated with many character traits, not the least of which include stubbornness. I have no doubt this is the sole reason I refused to start giving up my hair until over a month into treatment. I think at that point I had just begun to harbor a small, wildly improbable hope that maybe I would be immune to the balding persuasions of chemo, but sadly it was not to be. There I sat one fateful day in my living room, reading a book as nonchalantly as one can, when I reached up to scratch a slight itch on my scalp. That’s all it took to induce a soft flurry of ginger-hued strands to land innocently enough on the pages in front of me. “Well, crap,” I thought, brushing them away. The follicle reaper had finally come knocking, and it was time for me to pay my dues. As the days passed, I could scarcely touch my head without causing at least a few hairs to come loose, and in the shower, the price of using shampoo was at least a tuft or two. On more than one occasion, I had friends come up to me and brush off my shoulders when I had not realized the small drifts that had accumulated there. I let the slow and steady abandonment of my scalp take its natural course for as long as I could bear it, but there finally came a day that I knew it was time to say goodbye.

            Honestly, I hadn’t thought that shaving my head would be particularly hard. When it came right down to it, it was just a really thorough haircut, right? It would all grow back eventually and everything would be fine. In theory, yeah, it’s not a big deal. But when I looked at myself for the first time without hair, everything seemed to get still and quiet for a moment and I could almost see words and phrases being scrawled across the mirror next to my appearance: “Sick,” “Fragile,” “Not okay,” “Cancer patient.” What I hated most was the feeling that I had somehow submitted to this disease, or at the very least been forced to admit to it for all the world to see. I was officially marked, no denying that now. This moment, however, was only a moment, and I think the true difficulty stemmed not from my appearance but rather from the tangible reminder that my body was (and is) fighting for its life. An ugly truth remains a truth, though, and facing it head on is about the best thing one can do.

            After having been accustomed to the feeling of a towel sliding smoothly over my hair after a shower, drying my bald head for the first time felt something like dragging two rubber mats against one other. I also had the misfortune of shedding my head’s coat during the thick of fall with winter quickly approaching, so I felt cold drafts in a unique, chilling way that quickly lent itself to making hats a regular addition to my outfit. Like any adjustment, it was strange in many ways at first, but time has come to make it feel almost normal or at the very least familiar. The exodus did not end with only my head hair, however, and as the days, weeks, and months passed, I became increasingly aerodynamic. I had not thought much about how losing other regions of hair on my body might affect me (other than setting me up for a swimming career) until my eyebrows started saying their farewells. I have always thought eyebrows were odd features to begin with: two hairy islands, floating in the south seas of our foreheads. But it wasn’t until they were all but gone that I appreciated how much they contributed to expression and even recognition of other people. I looked at myself once again and saw something like a blank slate, a featureless face, and couldn’t help but think of one word: unmade.

            No person advances through their life without undergoing changes, without losing, without gaining, without reshaping. And while no one thing is ever the singular cause of the change we experience, I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that my cancer, reaching back over the last four years, has played a deeply pivotal role in my own story. Of the many things it has done, it has erased some of the assumptions about life that many of my own age might take for granted such as health, comfort, or longevity. Perhaps metaphors or parallelisms are more well-suited for the likes of literature rather than real life, but I couldn’t help but think how my new “blank slate” appearance reflected the reality of my personal outlook. Where assumptions are erased, space is left for new understanding; to form some of who we will become, some of who we were must be unmade. And it was in that thought that I looked at myself, not with shame or repulsion, but with expectation and hope for the things that could be written on the parts of me newly made empty. It won’t make me any less happy when my hair does finally decide to grow back, but taking time to recognize why it’s gone and the implications of what this experience has meant is a worthwhile exercise, at least in this bald man’s humble opinion. 

The Routine

           The ritual usually begins sometime in the morning. Sitting in room lined with chairs, not unlike a strange barber shop, I wait for my turn to meet with any one of the many nurses milling about. A plastic flower which looks like it belongs on a trucker’s dashboard next to a dancing hula lady bobs up and down on the window pane just to my left, offering whatever cheer it can in the otherwise sterile and beige-ridden area. Finally, I am wished a good morning and asked how I am doing. Pleasantries exchanged, I remove my shirt to reveal the small round bulge on my upper chest which marks the place where my port was installed. I thought with half-amusement when I had this access point put in that I looked like a less cool and certainly less shiny version of Iron Man. After inserting the IV needle, the nurse takes the blood he or she needs and tells me to have a good day, leaving the tubing dangling beneath my shirt for later use. In the following hour, I meet with my hematologist, a wonderfully friendly Indian woman named Dr. Reddy, and we discuss my blood counts and how my treatment is progressing. Another hour or so separates when I have to appear at the Infusion Center, and we typically take the time to grab lunch in the hospital’s cafeteria.

Once at the Infusion Center, we arrive at a room not much larger than a double-wide closet. Two chairs rest unassumingly in the corners while a TV offers the only apparent means of distraction opposite. I take an initial communion of small white pills from a paper cup and wait for half an hour or so while they take their positions to wage war against the waves of nausea inevitably on the way. A friendly nurse then takes her place and attaches a large syringe filled with the unmistakable red liquid that is Adriamycin (affectionately called “the red devil”) to my IV. Perpetually checking to make sure the toxic substance doesn’t escape the confines of my veins, the administration only takes about fifteen minutes or so. The same procedure is repeated for the Bleomycin and Vinblastine, only these liquids appear more innocuously clear. Finally, the Dacarbazine is brought forth in a plastic bag with a green covering and is set to drip steadily through the IV for anywhere between an hour or hour and a half. Once completed, we pick up our things and head home, our dues paid for the next two weeks. And so it is, again and again like the instructions on a shampoo bottle: lather, rinse, repeat. A steady, unrelenting attack: this is the battle plan against the enemy known as Hodgkin’s.

That much was easy enough to establish. I simply have to follow the procedures prescribed and then go about my business. The real challenge was trying to figure out what “going about my business” even looked like now. Having been a student basically nonstop for the past fifteen years of my life, I had always developed a routine for myself in order to stay up with my schoolwork and any other extracurriculars I might be involved in. Everything had its place, everything had its allotted time, and thus I moved forward with clear goals and objectives in mind. Now, however, I suddenly found myself suspended in a weird, amorphous existence where I no longer had academic requirements to fill or even employment obligations to attend to. I was simply taking time off to “get better.” I can tell you right now, definitively and decidedly, that sitting around and “getting better” does not exactly fill the hours of the day. Sure, it was nice taking a break from the hustle and bustle of a college kid’s breakneck-paced life, but after a couple of weeks or so, a creeping question worked its way to the forefront of my mind, “What do I do with myself?”

We all value the constantly elusive and ever so sweet commodity that is free time in the small doses in which we can find it, but here I was with nothing but free time on my day to day diet, and I began to feel bloated and sluggish like someone who has taken to eating only desserts for every meal. Whereas I had been driven to achieve while in school, I now felt directionless and ineffective, spending many days doing little more than watching TV or reading a book. I would rouse myself on some occasions with declarations of “I’m going to go out and get something done today!” only to realize that I really didn’t have anything to do out and get done. All at once, an opportunity to go to the grocery store or renew a car’s registration became the pinnacle of a day’s productivity, and I would seize the chance to feel like I had accomplished something worthwhile. Granted, not all days were like this simply because many times I would feel too poorly to do anything more than lay around in my living room, and during those times I was extremely grateful for the down time.

My situation seemed incurably drab, and I began to dread the months I would have to spend in this stale, uninspiring limbo. At some point, I can’t say exactly when, I took a step back and looked at my circumstances in a different light, however. Life, I realized, comes in seasons, both varied and unpredictable. In the season of my life as a college student, I had been hardwired with the go, go, go mindset that is necessary to survive and succeed in such an environment. Now, however, I was in a season of my life where all of that was stripped away and I had only the obligation to wake up each morning and continue breathing. And while not fast-paced or even very exciting, it was unmistakable how important this time was, not just for my health, but for my wellbeing as a person. I am learning that adversity comes in all shapes and sizes and even disguises itself in clever costumes to make us think that it is not adversity at all. All we can do, all we can ever do, is pick up the burdens placed before us and learn how to grow from the steps we take under their weight. Of all the trials I imagined that would accompany battling cancer, I never guessed that boredom and restlessness would loom over me just as ominously as the physical side-effects. Yet once I recognized them for what they were, I found myself better equipped to embrace them as tools for learning and not just trivial annoyances. And while I cannot quantify or foresee what the benefits of weathering such trials might be, I only know I must weather them nonetheless.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

The Plan

          Though chemotherapy was not a subject that I had given much consideration before this time, I think I was under the impression that the term was descriptive of a singular thing, as if all cancer patients received the same treatment regardless of their respective ailments. I quickly discovered the misguidedness of this preconception, however, and instead realized that the type of chemo prescribed by a physician varies in both duration and toxicity based on the particular cancer a patient has. In my case, the most standard approach to treating stage 2 Hodgkin’s is a chemo regimen concisely known as ABVD. As one can pretty easily guess, the four letters stand as an acronym for the four chemicals used in the therapy. A: Adriamycin, B: Bleomycin, V: Vinblastine, D: Dacarbazine. After learning these names, I instantly formed a love/hate relationship with them. Love, for the good they were meant to do against the cancer; hate, for the cost they demanded from my body in return.

            As anyone slightly acquainted with chemo knows, the real bugger about the whole thing is its indiscriminate nature. Yes, it is designed to attack the rapidly dividing cancer cells in your body, but it doesn’t take the time to figure out which rapidly dividing cells are cancer and which are say, the cells that constitute your immune system or the cells responsible for producing your hair. It just goes like a rabid dog, snapping up anything that meets its unfortunately broad criteria. Every two weeks for six months was my initial sentencing. That was, of course, if the PET scan after two months of treatment came back clean, meaning the cancer was responding well. While engaging in something that can generally be regarded as less than fun for half of a year did not send me into giddy fits, I reasoned that if I could suffer through the effects of this thing growing inside my chest for the better part of four years, I could stand going through a little more to be rid of it. The doctors also recommended an additional month of radiation following chemo, but we haven’t landed the plane on that one yet. There are still pros and cons to be weighed.

            So there was the plan, plain and simple enough. Yet at the time, the big question that still remained to be answered was could I remain in school while I did chemo? Of course, I tried to squeeze every bit of optimism from the doctors that I could; I just needed one of them to say “Oh yeah, no big deal. You can stay in school and handle this other crap no problem,” and I would have taken that as my license to forge ahead on my road to the increasingly evasive goal of graduating in four years. Unfortunately, no one was willing to offer anything more than a measly “Well, you might be okay, but don’t count on it.” My inner super student slumped in defeat. Nothing seemed more repulsive to me than to abandon the Auburn ship for at least one semester while my body decided how it was going to react to prescribed doses of poison. I wasn’t just giving up my role as a student, but also my leadership position in a student volunteer organization and my job at the university’s writing center, both of which I enjoyed immensely. Cancer was already going to take my health away; was it too much to ask to keep these other things that I valued so highly? Though it pained me, I could not in good conscience throw myself back into my busy student life without knowing what condition I would be in for the next several months. Like a little kid having his candy pried from his hungry fingers, I relinquished my hope that I would return to school for the fall semester.

            I have never been particularly good at goodbyes. Perhaps somewhere deep down I believe that if I refuse to recognize something is over, it won’t be. Despite my aversion, however, I said goodbye to many of my friends at Auburn during the one weekend I spent there while I collected my things to come home. I loathed doing it, but I said my farewells with an underpinning note of optimism and anticipation that my absence would only be temporary and that I would return better than when I left. To this day I don’t know for sure how long my educational hiatus will last, but I continually hope for a sooner rather than later prognosis. So that was the plan: fight one battle before returning to the other. It made the most logical sense, and it was in accordance with all the voices of caution and reason that only wished me the best. Even so, that didn’t keep me from hating it all the same.

The Floods

           Until the words were spoken, I hadn't realized I had been holding my breath for the past five days. Inwardly, I inhaled like a diver breaking the surface of the water after trying to touch the bottom of the ocean. “Hodgkin’s.” That was the best scenario we had been hoping for; that meant the numbers were heavily in our favor for beating this thing. The first flood was relief: I no longer had to guess, wonder, or hypothesize. I now knew my enemy, and I knew I could fight and win. The shadows of dread that had clung to me and tried to drag me down into an endless maze of worst-case scenarios finally washed away in the face of my new-found reality, albeit still less than ideal.

            The next flood that quickly followed was a slew of questions intermingled with new information. What were the treatment options? Where would be the best place to have those treatments done? What were the potential side effects? What was the survival rate? Could I stay in school? Why does lymphoma develop? Why did someone not catch this before? And on and on it went, all the while we soaked it up hungrily, eager to finally have some useful information of which we had been deprived for the better part of a week. The doctors that were working with us were extremely helpful and were happy to answer our relentless interrogations to the best of their abilities. One was even so kind as to set up a Skype session with my dad in order to catch him up to speed with all the new developments. Even though it was only on a computer screen, I can’t express how glad I was to see that reassuring face after feeling so isolated for days on end.

            We had a lot to work through, a lot of options to consider, but I was grateful that we at least could start devising our strategy. We would remain in Rochester for another day or two simply to complete a few preliminary tests to see if my body was strong enough to handle chemotherapy. Especially entertaining to watch was the echocardiogram I had done of my heart. Essentially it was like having an ultrasound, but instead of a baby I got to see the valves of my heart opening and closing like little hands high-fiving one another. Luckily everything checked out, so we could continue without any special restrictions or stipulations. Additionally, I finally felt comfortable sharing the news of my condition with friends and extended family since I could give them a definite diagnosis rather than freaking everyone out with a vague “I have a tumor, but we don’t know what it is for sure.”

            What quickly followed after letting the word out was the third flood: wave after wave of encouragement, support, and love, the likes of which I had never seen before. I can honestly say that from the time my diagnosis was made public to the present day, I have received some of the most uplifting and genuinely kind words from both friends and family; words that I could never imagine deserving, but words that I treasure and count just as important as any medicine to my recovery. Even writing this, I am blown away when I think about how lucky I am to have the people in my life that I do. It’s almost overwhelming, but in the best possible way, make no mistake.

            After what had felt like nothing short of an eternity, my mom and I finally found ourselves boarding the plane that would take us back home. I had been living in a state of near unreality for the past ten days, as if my time at Mayo Clinic had been a venture into some sort of purgatory, and I felt like returning home would finally reinstate me in the land of the living. As the world below shrank away into a sea of clouds and endless horizon, a final, creeping flood took hold of me: realization. Yes, I was returning home, and yes that was a huge relief, but I was slowly realizing that I was not returning as the same person. Though I would soon be in familiar surroundings with familiar people, I had already entered into a completely unfamiliar situation. It’s true, I had been sick for a long time; the only difference was now I knew what to call it. I suppose that knowledge and having some idea of what the road to getting better entailed contributed to the sense of fear and excitement that mingled together into an indistinguishable mass of anticipation that weighed and continues to weigh on me. Be that as it may, I knew I was not in this alone, and that was enough for me to welcome the challenge ahead with all the reserved confidence of one who firmly believes in victory, but is unsure of the journey to reach it.

The Wait

            Though they do not completely sedate you when taking a tissue biopsy out of your chest, the experience was not necessarily unpleasant. Though I was aware of the rather large needle being inserted into my body and the blood issuing forth with each extraction, the numbing agents did their job beautifully and I was spared the pain I knew I should be feeling. The unpleasant part came with the knowledge that we would not know the results for several days. As misfortune would have it, the procedure took place just before Labor Day weekend, meaning those responsible for analyzing the tissue and determining my official diagnosis would not be working for a couple of days, thus prolonging the already lengthy process of histological examination.

            So there I was, alone, save for the company of my mom, in a small Minnesotan city with my nearest friends or family several states away. In the short time I had spent in Rochester, I had magically transformed from a relatively normal 22-year-old college student into a cancer patient. Though the doctor had been mostly sure of what we were dealing with, I could not shake the fact that there existed a small possibility that what was living inside of my chest could be something more insidious. I tried my best not to dwell on the thought, but uncertainty gnawed at my mind like merciless termites.

            We spent the next several days doing our best to keep ourselves occupied. My mom and I became what felt like combatants in a WWII trench: both unprepared for the enemy we now faced, but continually fighting to keep each other’s morale up, knowing that for now we only had one another to rely on. Of course, phone calls and emails let those closest to us know what was happening, and I cherished the love, encouragement, and support that came spilling out of every reply we received. For all that though, I would have killed for a hug. I had to be incredibly grateful, however, because if a guy had to choose only one person to spend the most uncertain days of his life with, he couldn’t do better than having his momma’s love right there to help him along.

            Rochester didn’t offer much in the way of sightseeing or entertainment, but we found several good burger joints and a nice park nearby that teemed with veritable armies of friendly geese and ducks to spend some of our free time with. We even took one day to travel to Minneapolis and see the monstrosity known as the Mall of America. Normally I wouldn’t so readily consent to spending a day at a mall, but they had roller coasters, so how could I say no? The days crept forward in this fashion, each one a challenge to maintain sanity, each one a reminder that my nicely planned life was irreparably off-course.

            Eventually, I found myself sitting at a table in an open-air courtyard ordering Greek cuisine from one of the local cafes on the eve of the day of reckoning. We would know the results tomorrow; that much had been assured to us. As always, the termites were at work in my head, doing their best to weaken the supports that upheld what I had doggedly told myself again and again, “I’m going to be okay.” I did everything I could to dissolve any associations between this meal and the Last Supper. For the first time that I can remember, I felt the creeping animal fear that my existence on this planet might be jeopardy. Of course we must all face our mortality at some point, but did it have to be this point? I couldn’t shake the various scenarios playing themselves out in my imagination. The doctor entering the room, sitting down and beginning with a somber “Unfortunately…” or “I’m sorry…”

            I tried to retrain my focus on the baklava on my plate or the soft gurgling of the fountain just yards from where we sat, anything to bring me back to the present, physical world of which I was still very much a part, and to which I intended to remain a part so far as I could help it. I took solace in the fact that, if nothing else, tomorrow the wait would be over. The agonizing, seemingly endless wait would be over and thank God for that.

The Answer

I had waited the better part of four years for those four words, words that flowed off the doctor’s lips that day with such ease that the skeptic within me immediately doubted their veracity. “We found the answer.” I had been at Mayo Clinic for less than 24 hours, yet this man believed he had solved the riddle to my unending, unrelenting itching; itching that had left 16 doctors before him scratching their heads and offering best guesses and conjectures instead of solutions. Of course I wanted to believe him, but the multitude of past ineffective treatments left me guarded and reserved at any statements of surety. I leaned forward, saying nothing but waiting to hear what he had to say.

“The results of the CT scan just came back, and they found that you have a large mediastinal mass in the center of your chest. It’s most likely lymphoma.” Silence. Blank stare. I sat there like a stage player who had forgotten his lines. This was a situation I had not rehearsed. Cancer? I thought I had prepared myself for whatever the doctors could dish out to me, but somehow this contingency had never crossed my mind. “Would you like to take a look?” My ability to speak seemed all but gone, but I managed to nod my head and offer a hollow “Sure,” scooting my chair around to better see the computer screen.

As he clicked through the series of cross sections of my chest, he stopped somewhere above my heart and pointed. “See that blurry mass right there? That’s not supposed to be there.” He continued to click forward, bit by bit revealing the 13.3 centimeters of uninvited guest residing in the spaces surrounding my heart and lungs. I remained stolid in the unreality of it all. I didn’t feel the thing nearly the size of a grapefruit inside of me, so how could it really be there? Maybe it was some kind of mistake. It was just an image on a screen after all.

“It’s okay to be upset,” I hear the doctor say. “Most people are upset when they get this kind of news.” I nearly apologize for my lack of reaction. I feel like I am doing the moment an injustice by not falling to my knees or at least squeezing out a few tears to indicate that I understand the weight of what I am being told.

“I’m not sure I know how to react,” I respond truthfully. I look at my mom sitting beside me; she puts a hand on my shoulder as the tears run down her face. After a few moments spent letting the shock dissipate, we ask how cancer can be the cause of chronic itching. The doctor explains that while the direct connection between the two is not precisely known, there is a well-documented association between itching and lymphoma. I’m amazed that this is the first time we have ever heard of this. In the dozens of appointments in which I had described my symptoms to well-trained medical professionals, never had cancer even been a consideration in their attempts to explain my condition.

“We’ll have to do a biopsy of the mass to determine for sure what kind of cancer this is, but I feel 90% sure that we’re looking at Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.” The doctor assures us that of all the cancers to get, this is the one you want. A morbidly humorous image forms in my mind of strolling down an isle of cancers, a salesman pointing to Hodgkin’s with a reassuring wink, This is the one you want, kid. At least I had the sense to get the right brand of cancer.

Knowing we could not move forward until the biopsy was taken and the results analyzed, we walked out of room 41A, grateful we finally had our answer, terrified by what the answer meant.