The Surgeon

I was thrown for a loop. As I drove to the gym, I couldn’t get my mom off my mind. I mean, she’s been in the forefront lately, but as drove along the Five Freeway, it was just too much. I yanked my phone from my gym bag and called her. And the timing was perfect. My mother informed me she was on her way to visit the surgeon to find get a second opinion about her lab results. WhaaaaaaaaaaaTTTTT?! The last five T’s left a sprinkle of saliva on the steering wheel.

I guess I had the dates mixed up. Or she refrained from telling me because of my history of worry. Or I might have a little too much on my plate to keep things straight. Whatever the case may be, we were on the same freeway about 30 miles apart. I begged her to let me go with her, but she preferred to go alone.

As I stood in the front row of my kickboxing class, I was a total wreck. My mind and body were in two different places. They jumped, I squatted. They kicked front, I kicked back. They were up, and I was down. Literally.

A few hours later, I received a call from my mother. The long story short is that the surgeon also can’t determine if it’s cancer from her biopsy, but he’s scheduled surgery to remove the lump. Then one of two things will happen: 1. If he discovers it’s cancer mid-surgery, he’ll remove both her nodules and be done with it; or 2. If he’s still not sure it’s cancer, he’ll just remove one nodule, and later remove the other if he confirms the disease.

The silver lining to this situation is that the doctor says he has everything under control. By the looks of the situation, he says she needn’t worry because it’s definitely not full-blown, uncontrollable cancer. This is good news. Yes, there’s a surgery in my mother’s future—and the possibility of chemo—but, really, the silver lining is that there’s hope. A lot of it. Hope, when combined with my faith, has always provided the fuel to move forward and be filled with peace. And this is more than I could ever ask for right now.