Waiting for the Doctor to Call

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We’ve all had those moments in our health where the news we get just isn’t the best. That little tumble on the ice you want to walk off, it’s a broken bone. That little cough, it’s bronchitis. Your cholesterol came back high, let’s treat it. All fairly benign situations for the most part, right. Temporary inconveniences we work around, but they don’t consume us.

Sometimes, the big ones get us. As I’m typing this right now, my eyes are darting from the phone on my desk, to the clock, to the phone. To the calendar, to my cell phone, to the clock to the desk phone…back to my computer. I’m checking the caller ID’s of every phone in a 10 mile radius that may have been on a contact sheet at some point. Why am I playing this time slowing game, you ask? I’m waiting to find out if I have cancer. I’m lucky enough to say it not a scary cancer, but none the less – freaking cancer!

We as woman and moms, are constantly waiting on things. Waiting for the school bus, for shoes to be put on… often times with screams of madness as our sloth like children take what feels like hours to slip on a Croc. Waiting on line at the store or a pickup queue, or (my fave) waiting feverishly for kiddo bedtime. But this wait. This wait BLOWS!!

Trying to hold in the terror that racks my brain for the sake of my kiddos while waiting is becoming harder and harder. I want to scream! I want to run out into our yard and scream so loud that these thoughts of my kids motherless are purged from my brain. I want to stop crying. I want to make a meal or do something and not suddenly feel my face wet with tears. I want to hide in the bathroom because I found a left over Mounds bar I don’t want to share. Not because I can’t stop crying.

It’s the 21st Century, right?

The most frustrating of all of this, is that in today’s medically advanced society one would think this process would be cut and dry, right?!?! Sentences like “We found a small mass” wouldn’t need a 2.5 months wait to hear “We’ll send off the tissue from your 2nd biopsy and give you a call within 10 business days.” Granted, I do need to take a little ownership of the wait. When the first biopsy came back in that murky gray area of the cancer scale, I mentally retreated. I went about my Thanksgiving and Christmas ignoring the call to action the depths of my brain was begging for. As the New Year started rolling in, panic set in about the unknown and I took action.  

The wait will be over soon. The wait will be over soon, my husband and I keep repeating to each other. But really? Can time drag by any slower!?

All I can do it wait and distract my self with Netflix, online shopping and wine…lots and lots of wine. So here’s to all the moms, spouses, children, parents and care givers that have done this same wait. I raise my glass of wine to us all and the mental strength we have that got us thru it.

1 COMMENT

  1. I had the same experience this fall. I kept thinking, “we can put a man on the moon – why can’t we make this biopsy result process quicker??”. Best of luck to you, and I hope it’s benign.

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