It's probably nothing

It’s hard to feel OK when you have an ultrasound wand probing certain private areas of your anatomy, searching for something that’s probably nothing. You lie there staring at the darkened ceiling, where some conscientious but insensitive clinic employee placed a horrible poster of a pile of frogs with big buggy red eyes, and they are all staring down at you, watching you squirm.

Multiple frogs, multiple cells, reproducing like -- frogs -- malignant, and metastasizing! The anxiety builds to a crescendo. Out comes one tear, and then another, it wants to rain, but your eyes squeeze tight.

You try to hide the fact that you are scared to death. You try to find something to hold on to, something to stabilize things. There's only the stupid hospital gown wadded up in your fists.

Then it's over and the very nice attendant tells you that the doctors will appraise the images and you'll be notified of the results in a few days.

The phone rings, and it's the doctor. The instant you hear her voice you remember she said that if everything were OK the clinic would send a letter, but if they found something, she’d call.

So there it is. Now you have to go in for more tests. But try not to panic, because it’s probably nothing.

Hearing the “C” word is a punch in the gut. It deploys the air bag between the reality that is your life up until that point and the concrete pylon of an illness that is impossible to steer around. For a second there is hyper reality, then mist. When the mist clears the world is a different place altogether, complete with hospital waiting rooms, solemn doctors mumbling quietly as they consult over images of your internal organs, and big decisions.

But until you know for sure, you have to add; “It’s probably nothing” every time you speak about it -- because you don’t want to alarm anyone unnecessarily.

The fact is you are alarmed. You are VERY alarmed! There is a clanging bell reverberating in your skull 24 hours a day. Your eyes are wide open with fear. Your mouth is dry and cottony. Your conversation is disjointed, truncated by a mind preoccupied and exhausted.

You feel so crazy, because after all, it’s probably nothing.