It escapes me now

There's a lot to be said for knowing you're going to live awhile longer. (There's a lot to be said about the reverse, I suppose, but I've only ever been in the limbo place between not knowing and what if.) I don't think it's the same. However, I'm out of there as of today. I don't have cancer.

Huh? Okay, so I've kept the situation pretty much under wraps, because it's what I do. Other people's concern, as well-meaning as it may be, affects me adversely. It adds exponentially to my own combination of dread/denial and in a crisis, (real or imaginary), I can't cope with anyone's hysteria but my own.

So... now that this particular crisis is over, although I admit it's a bit anticlimactic, this is the deal: The March mammogram I spoke of here showed a "suspicious density" which required a trip to a different refrigerator door, which required a sonogram, which required today a core biopsy. Finally, some good drugs before an invasive procedure. (It's a mystery to me why the medics think smashing your flesh does not require anesthetic but puncturing does.) After the biopsy I still had to have six more films taken before they let me out, and I didn't feel a thing. I suggested to the technician that maybe lydocaine (or zylocaine) should be standard before every mammogram. She thought I was kidding.

Of course the anesthetic has worn off now, and I am left with an ow-eee that I'm tending with sleep, xtra-strength tylenol, and a chocolate bunny. (I think they call it self-medicating.) I'm very much like a cat in my need to sleep when I'm bruised, so I took the afternoon off and did exactly that.

I was going to post something profoundly spiritual about this experience, but whatever I was thinking escapes me now. Another time perhaps...