Recalculating

So you know when you’re driving somewhere, using GPS and suddenly right when you’re about to turn left onto Route Takemesomewhere you lose cell service or your GPS freezes? If you’re super lucky, it’ll unfreeze and tell you its recalculating to get you around whatever object is in the road or wherever there’s a sudden standstill. Might take you a bit longer to get there, but you can count on the new plan, at least.

As of last Thursday, I started recalculating. Got the news on Thursday that the suspected cancer was, indeed, cancer. Right breast, DCIS (ductal carcinoma in situ), probably stage 0, Left breast, invasive carcinoma in two spots plus at least one lymph node, probs stage 2ish. They won’t know until surgery when they get in there and fuck me all up.

Sorry for the curse words but seriously? Whatthefuck? I had a two week vacation planned. We were going to drive down 95 and visit friends and go to Seabrook Island for a while. We were going to buy school supplies and backpacks. We talked about rescuing another German Shorthaired Pointer to keep Poppy company. Mark was working on getting a new job.

Instead, the cancer bus pulled up and it is full of stinky rude weirdos and the whole bus is ugly and smells and is bad for the environment. And the driver, who is nasty and probably drunk and ugly too is honking the horn and yelling at me and saying, “SORRYYYYY! I know you had a perfectly normal thing going, but you’ve got to come with us now, and you’ll be gone for a while! Let’s go, sucker!”

THAT. Is what it feels like. So Thursday, at 1:30 PM when I got the call, I got on this ugly, smelly cancer bus filled with mean gross people I don’t want to be with. And my whole family, my kids and all my friends get to stand on the side of the road and watch me miserably ride this bus, and they all feel so bad that I’m the one who has to take this ride, and they are feeling just as helpless as me.

First stop, a full-day, interdisciplinary consult at MGH.