The next day I made an appointment with my general practitioner. The earliest she could see me was a couple of weeks away. This was in the days before google even existed, much less had become a verb. I used my dial-up service to conduct some internet research. It was limited, but all I read pointed to the same thing. In the absence of trauma, the most likely explanation was some stage of colon cancer. I was not surprised. My father had died of that disease ten years before; I knew I was at risk.
As the days passed, I studied the toilet every time I had a bowel movement, and I was relieved to see no tint to the water. I hoped it was a false alarm, but I knew that the amount of blood I had seen was a possible indicator that anything wrong could be quite advanced.
Confronted by my own mortality, it was hard not to be a little morbid sometimes. Songs on the radio seemed like excellent choices for a memorial service, especially I Will Remember You by Sarah MacLachlan and I Believe I Can Fly by R. Kelly. “And she planned it herself?” my mourners would marvel. “Wow, I just couldn’t have done it.” It was hard not to be optimistic, too, to be sure it was nothing, mostly because something like that couldn’t happen to me, and plus, I was only 35.
The two weeks crawled by. I stayed busy doing crossword puzzles. I couldn’t get enough of them; there was something soothing about challenges with definite answers. I had decided not to tell my family, because I didn’t want them to worry. I didn’t mention it at work; it seemed a little too personal, and D and I didn’t really talk about it either, although later, she told me that she wrote a long list of all the things that she wouldn’t miss about me.
I’m sure that list came in handy a few months later when we broke up.
As the days passed, I studied the toilet every time I had a bowel movement, and I was relieved to see no tint to the water. I hoped it was a false alarm, but I knew that the amount of blood I had seen was a possible indicator that anything wrong could be quite advanced.
Confronted by my own mortality, it was hard not to be a little morbid sometimes. Songs on the radio seemed like excellent choices for a memorial service, especially I Will Remember You by Sarah MacLachlan and I Believe I Can Fly by R. Kelly. “And she planned it herself?” my mourners would marvel. “Wow, I just couldn’t have done it.” It was hard not to be optimistic, too, to be sure it was nothing, mostly because something like that couldn’t happen to me, and plus, I was only 35.
The two weeks crawled by. I stayed busy doing crossword puzzles. I couldn’t get enough of them; there was something soothing about challenges with definite answers. I had decided not to tell my family, because I didn’t want them to worry. I didn’t mention it at work; it seemed a little too personal, and D and I didn’t really talk about it either, although later, she told me that she wrote a long list of all the things that she wouldn’t miss about me.
I’m sure that list came in handy a few months later when we broke up.
No comments:
Post a Comment