HANG ON SLOOPY?

THE MONDAY FOLLOWING the MRI, I received a call from the nurse at the cancer research center. The radiologist’s report, the nurse said, confirmed what the earlier CT scan had shown: one small, Jelly-Belly sized tumor that could easily be removed.

ON WEDNESDAY MORNING I met with the surgeon. His money was still on melanoma, he confided. In his experience, the tumor was behaving too little like ductal carcinoma. Tom and I would know by Friday. He would tell Tom before I was even out of recovery.

HE LED ME TO A WOMAN who matches the surgeon’s schedule with available operating rooms. How did the following morning sound, she asked with a smile that seemed far too pleasant. I mean, this is SURGERY! Someone is going to put me to sleep. Someone else is going to cut me with a knife. Does anyone know anyone well enough to feel good about that? I mean really.

WE SETTLED ON FRIDAY morning, and I, with knees that had developed the trick of knocking together, headed to the opposite end of the Baylor complex so that I could register for “elective” surgery . . . as if removal of a cancerous tumor could be considered a choice. (The nurse in admissions explained that if the patient hasn’t come in on a gurney and can nod in assent, surgery is elective! Another name needs to be found. Like courageous surgery.)

FRIDAY CAME FAR TOO QUICKLY, but it brought good news. (It doesn’t take a lot to make me happy these days.) The surgeon had been right. The pathologist who read the needle biopsy had been wrong, and the radiologist who read the mammogram and the sonogram had been mistaken too. It was melanoma.

THERE MUST BE A LESSON in all this. Mistakes happen? “Today’s trouble is enough for today (Matt 6:34b)?” “Hang on Sloopy” (from the song written by Rick Derringer)?

I DON’T KNOW, but I do know what I prayed when my brain cleared itself of enough anesthesia to let me understand that I’d managed to remain on the clinical trial AND I wasn’t facing more than one type of cancer—my very favorite prayer—“Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” (Feel free to chime right in.)

You’re blessed. Be a blessing.