Tuesday, July 24th, 2018....I don’t want to say diagnosis day because we literally did not have enough information then, but it certainly was the day that the tumor was discovered. I drove Michael to the doctors office where his colonoscopy was going to take place. After about 20 minutes of waiting, they took him back, but I was not allowed to go back with him. They took my number and told me they would call once he was in recovery.
Off I went, I didn’t exactly know what to do, especially because I didn’t want to go too far. The mall was nearby so I went there. I parked far away from where I wanted to go because I wanted to kill time. We don’t usually have time because of our work so sometimes when we have it we don’t know what to do with it. I poked around in a few stores and picked out a few things for the dogs. I had been standing in the check-out line with the dog toys and all of a sudden this wave of feeling hot took over my body. I had perspiration on my face and I could feel it dripping down my back. I could have left everything and left the store but one of the toys was the exact toy Lila loves and I wanted a spare for her. Finally, I was out of there and needed to use the bathroom. I knew the best bathroom was halfway between where I was and my car. As soon as I hit the entrance of that store location, which was now about 11:35am, I got the call that Michael was in recovery and the nurse asked me how long I would be and asked me to notify the office when I had arrived. I was only across the street so I wasn’t going to be long .
As instructed, I let the woman at the desk know I was there and within seconds a nurse was calling me back. Michael had no idea I was coming back and I had no idea that he had asked the nurse at the very beginning if I could come back and she had told him, “no.” We started laughing and joking and then the nurse came in and said the doctor would still be awhile. Michael turned to me and said, “it isn’t a good thing that you are back here, the nurse told me no one was allowed back here.” We both kind of laughed it off, I mean Michael has hardly been any type of sick other than a minor cold the 12 years we have been together. I had myself convinced that all the symptoms he had been feeling, all the months of not feeling right, were going to finally be explained, as in something like Crohns or Irritable Bowl Syndrome. Never did I expect what happened next.
Finally the doctor came in and said whatever he said about a tumor in the rectum and that in his experience it looks malignant but we wouldn’t know for sure until the pathology report is back in about five days. We both were stunned and completely shocked but honestly took the news like champs. The nurses kept asking if we were ok, but we literally wanted to get the F outta there. We both kept saying, did he really just say that? Is it possible he jumped the gun and it’s benign? How do you give someone news like this and make them wait five days?! We needed to digest the news we had just heard. From 12:15pm on, the rest of the day was a blur. We were completely numb from the shock. But we were also trying to figure out what to do. We needed a plan, literally we were beginning to mentally prepare for the fight.
