Perspective

When we went for a second surgical opinion, I wasn't expecting much. I held a secret hope that they would tell me I was the perfect candidate for the muscle-sparing TRAM flap (aka tummy tuck) surgery. In reality, though, I was just so tired of being touched that I spent the 3-hour drive thinking about how I was probably wasting my time. Either way, someone would eventually be getting this crap out of my body. Perspective.

The female surgeon was very nice and efficient. I felt comforted by the fact that she actually had breasts. . and children. It's like the difference between an OB who has a vagina and one who doesn't. At least if I had to be here, I had finally found someone who could relate to what I was feeling. Perspective.

As she went through the physical portion of the exam, she pressed on my stomach and moved her hands back and forth. I noticed immediately that it hurt. I thought maybe that Subway breakfast sandwich I inhaled on the way over was going to come right back up. She looked at me and said, "what's this?" I said, "Ham and egg white on flat bread?" She said it was a "suspicious mass."

For those of you who don't know, my Daddy had abdominal pain 22 months ago. They sent him for an abdominal CT scan and found the suspicious mass that took him away from us nine months later. So when the surgeon looked at her nurse and said, "get her downstairs for an abdominal CT scan right now," the floor fell out from underneath me. She said she didn't know what it was and that we would investigate. I tried to mumble something about how a suspicious abdominal mass killed my Daddy. Neither John or I remember much else from the meeting. She agreed with most of the other opinions. I wouldn't be a TRAM flap candidate, but the healing time for that would be so much worse anyway, she said. She seemed to think that I would be excited that I would be allowed to keep my nipples. And that there is a 20% chance of necrosis of the nipple. Yeah- that means it dies and falls off- so sexy. Then she told me that it would be at least another month before they could do my surgery. Suddenly Mr. Magoo was looking a little better. Perspective.

We listened as long as we could before we told her that all we wanted to do was get the CT scan over. It was like we were in some alternate universe where they didn't understand that they were causing us the greatest degree of mental distress possible. I wanted to scream at them and run.

They walked us downstairs where a nice man in his 50's who reminded me of my Daddy told me that I would have to drink 44 ounces of nuclear fruit punch and sit around for 90 minutes thinking about dying before he could even do the scan. I wandered around the hospital shop looking at wigs and with every sip I wondered if I would even have the chance to wear one. Perspective.

As we sat, we never uttered a single word. We thought I was dying. I wondered if I would get longer than nine months. John wondered what he would do without me. I wondered why God was punishing me.

After about two hours, they took me back and injected me with some hot radioactive dye. As I started to cry, I explained to the nice man that it was my 10th anniversary and I thought I was dying like my Daddy. He told me he would make sure I wouldn't have to wait until Monday for my results.

While we sat back in the waiting room, two middle-aged women with breast cancer sat and talked loudly about how horrible chemo is and how their bodies went to shit once they stopped producing estrogen. If I hadn't been so scared that I was dying, I would have kicked both of them right in the head. At that moment I felt so abandoned by God- almost as if Satan himself was laughing at how terrified I was.

After half an hour the nice man brought the phone in with my doctor on the other end. I held my breath as she told me that I had an anomaly that I was born with. It's called a horseshoe kidney. My kidneys are fused together in a horseshoe shape and are slightly enlarged, but they are functioning perfectly and it's completely harmless. Are you f*ing kidding me?! We ran out of that hospital as quickly as we could. We sat in the car and watched two young hipsters get into their Prius with their Starbucks Vente Latte's and we cussed at them just for fun. We sat in our sound proof car and told them how they better appreciate their perfect f*ing yuppy cancer-free life with no mysterious stomach masses and perfect f*ing boobs.

At our over-priced anniversary meal, John looked at me with a huge smile and said, "this is the best anniversary ever." I stared at him with a very clear "what the F are you talking about- this is the WORST anniversary I could ever have imagined," look. "It's the best anniversary ever because you're not dying," he said, "and I can't make it without you." Perspective.