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.