A few weeks ago, I discovered a lump in my abdomen. I don’t know that “discovered” is exactly the right word since I was at least marginally aware of this lump and the fact that it was getting harder to ignore as it grew larger. Truthfully, I’ve been aware of it on some level for probably 4 months. The lump grew to size of an apple – I prefer to think of it as a pretty caramel apple with rainbow sprinkles…
Of course, in my mind it was a large horrible cancerous growth. Like those people in the Enquirer who are like, “I had a 43 pound tumor removed from my face!“, I decided that I had some giant Cancer Ball in me. In fact, probably not even just one – but probably lots of them. I figured that maybe I was just a big, walking, talking Cancer Ball Machine and I took inventory of my body and all the places that I could potentially be storing another Cancer Ball. I could definitely be hiding one or more in each boob. Certainly, a whole fruit bowl of Cancer Balls in my stomach… a few in my knees…. in my active Cancer Ball Machine fantasy, they all talk like those big gross boogers in the Mucinex commercials.
“Hey Lou! I think she finally noticed me!
“Fuggeddaboutit, Frank! She’s in denial. You catch the Cubs game?”
“JAYSUS CHRIST DON’T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON SORIANO AND THE GODDAMNED HOP!”
“Frank.. Frank… easy… let’s go play some cards. We’ll smoke some stogies and put some porn on and just generally act cancerous.”
“Really, Lou? Ya mean it.”
“You got it, buddy. Anything for a friend.”
Cancer Balls are from Chicago, if you didn’t know.
So, I finally go to the doctor, who expertly pokes the lump and decides to send me to The Surgeon, which was not the most comforting thing in the world, but not unexpected. Of course, best case scenario for me was that the doctor would go, “Lump? What lump? Lady, you are crazy and need extensive therapy provided daily at a nice resort/spa in the Bahamas.”
Instead she said, “It’s a lump. It could be a mass. It could be scar tissue. It could be a hernia. Go see the surgeon.”
What she didn’t say was, “It will be humanly impossible to get in to see the surgeon for at least 2 weeks, so plan to spend the next 14 days drifting blissfully between denial and terror.”
FINALLY…. yesterday, I had my appointment with the surgeon and he poked it and fondled it and lifted it and made me stand up and sit down and lie down and cough and breath and do a sit up and cough some more and then he gravely asked me to take a seat and I braced myself (as did, in my mind, Lou and Frank) and he said,
“You have a hernia.”
And I jumped up and licked him all over his face with joy!
Ok. I didn’t. But, I was so happy to find out that I didn’t have Cancer Balls at all. Not even Cubs fans ones. I had a hernia, which a million-billion people have had and is a totally routine surgery to correct. Yes, I’ll be out for a while after the surgery – and he doesn’t want to do it for 6 weeks or so to give me time to meet with my hematologist to get the red blood cells and iron all puffed up and happy… and yes, it’ll be tricky figuring out how to not lift The Baby while I’m healing… but it was really wonderful news.
He gave me a giant comic book of pictures of what hernias look like and how they are fixed. The pictures look mostly like this:
but I prefer to still think of it as this: 