Pause for the Cause

Pause for the Cause

At last the pace is beginning to slacken, so that I can squeeze a few minutes in to write a few words, a pause for the cause if you’d prefer.  Annie and I returned a few days ago from the follow-up, full body-scan, to determine if the radiation treatment had successfully eradicated the remainder of the thyroid cancer cells.  

There was a somewhat suspicious conference, as the test technician called in another specialist for a consultation while examining Annie’s results, but as I said to Annie, clarifying questions need not be undue cause for alarm.  Annie has since received a copy of the results herself, and will soon be able to consult with her doctor, to find out the definitive results-or as certain as is possible in these instances.

We are very much looking forward to Thanksgiving Day, at Casey and Amber’s this year, an auspicious venue if ever there was one.  There are a couple of logistical details to be taken care of first, one of which is my ten-year colonoscopy the day after tomorrow.  Funny how something could have impacted me so extremely, ten years ago, and be so insignificant, this time around.   I am downright nonchalant about the whole thing, including the need to travel down to San Francisco for the experience, at that nice VA Hospital.

I attribute four reasons to this shift in my thinking, the first being that I have since acquired a basic set of tools for dealing with the minor anxieties of life.  I refuse to speculate on “what-if?” questions, or to engage in catastrophizing, the irrational thought process a lot of us have, in believing that something is-or may be-worse than it actually is.  If obstacles arise, I deal with them, without undue stress before the fact.

Secondly, I have been through the experience already so the mystique is no longer there.  I could regale you with my tale of woe and misfortune, and then you could detail the indignities of your past experience, and we could all weep and wail together.  Or not.

Then there is perspective.  Having been a part of Annie’s frenetic battle against kidney cancer and thyroid cancer for the past year, for me to whine about an inconvenience, designed to prevent the ultimate inconvenience-death is rarely timely-would be somewhat callous.

Finally, there is that concept of choice.  If you want to have a specialist render an opinion as to the current state of your colon, then you go through whatever process the doctor orders.  By the same token, if you do not want to endure all that this test entails, then pass on it, and take your chances, as we all do in life.  Whatever blows air up your skirt, as me father used to say.

Meanwhile, I prefer to dwell on the fact that, except for the organic turkey we will order from Mariposa’s, everything else planned for Thanksgiving dinner, will come from Happy Day Farms.  

Five will get you ten that Casey and Amber will acquire some turkey chicks, sometime next spring, and by Thanksgiving?  All organic-all from Happy Day Farms.  

Well, maybe not the Jameson’s.