“It’s cancer, Judyth”

Waiting for test results is usually agonizing enough as it is.  Waiting to find out if you have cancer is more stressful than anyone should have to endure.  Especially if you’re already a stressball like me.  I didn’t get out of that marathon Mammogram, Ultrasound, Biopsy “trilogy of fun” until about 5:30 p.m. on a Tuesday.  I didn’t get a call until around 10:00 a.m. the following Monday. ..yes, 6 days later  (thanks to Good Friday).  Those 6 days were among the most agonizing I can recall.  Everyone was telling me “try not to think about it”.  Okay, you try not to think about it if you were waiting to hear whether or not you have cancer.  It’s nearly impossible to think about anything else!  When the call finally came it was from the associate from my OB/GYN’s office who had examined me the week before.  Because she had written the order for the mammogram all the test results came back to her so she was the one who had to call me.  I will always appreciate the fact that she didn’t fuck around.  She came right to the point.  “It’s cancer, Judyth”.  In that instant my whole world fell away.  I had been standing out in front of my office building to be able to talk freely and now I desperately needed to sit down.  I tried to listen as she read some stuff off the pathologists report, but all I could hear was the sound of my heart pounding in my ears.  I mean anything after “It’s cancer, Judyth” didn’t really matter anyway…

The last thing she said to me was that she had never had to tell anyone they had cancer before and how sorry she was.  Well no one had ever had to tell me I had cancer so I guess it was a day of firsts for both of us.