September 4, 2015

I’m generally a gloomer and doomer, but Friday I was oddly hopeful as I waited for the phone to ring with results of the biopsy.

Something happened in my mid 30’s that I like to call, “So now I’m dying.”  A weird ache, digestive problem, cluster headache, muscle strains; all of these things clearly meant that I was DYING. End-of-the-world. Well, no, Leah you’re just getting older. You’re not dying, your body is changing. This time would be the same thing, right? Wrong.

Around 5:30 Dr. Murphy called and told me it was cancer. He told me I needed to come back and get an MRI. It was a long weekend so the next appointment was three days away. Three. Days. That’s a long time to sit with all of the feelings that come with the words, “You have cancer.”  This will be my new reality, waiting for appointments to shed more and more light on a very complex and individual subject: Cancer.

When a doctor ends a phone call with, “we’ll have your films ready so you can bring them to your breast surgeon and oncologist”, it’s pretty surreal. Yes, he is talking to me.