Another week, another devastating disease. Welcome to my world.
I've been feeling remarkably sane lately. I managed to spend a whole entire weekend with my anxiety-wrought mother and I must say that driving home on Sunday, I felt like I was on top of the world. Fast-forward to today, Monday. And this particular Monday is a paradox - beginning and end all unto itself. Not only is it the last day of June, it is also the last day that the three of us will be living together as the happy family we once wanted to be but never really managed to become. The happy family that is so dysfunctional that even people who don't know us see right through the façade. Yep, that kind of happy. Tomorrow he is moving out.
And I am wracked with fear. Not about being a single parent. No. That doesn't matter because I will most likely be dead in a few months. I have either advanced-stage lung cancer or cancer of the pancreas. Let me explain.
The day started much like any other. My daughter had a nasty case of hives, so I gave her some Benadryl and took her to daycare, and made my way to the clinic where I had an appointment with my family md to get a mole checked. Turns out, the mole was looking far less suspicious this morning than it had last week when I had called to make the appointment, but I kept the appointment anyway, just to be on the safe side. The doctor went through the whole spiel, measuring it, examining it, asking me questions about it, and then , of course, telling me that it didn't look at all suspicious.
I was fine until this evening, when I decided to take my daughter to Macy's and, well, to make a long story short, the shopping trip culminated with her draping a towel over her head and running down an aisle screeching as loud as she could, and then me carrying her, squirming and writhing about, under my left arm while I pushed the childless stroller with my right. And then, it started. As I sat down in the driver's seat and started the car, I noticed a funny pain in the upper left quadrant of my back.
I stopped for a moment to analyze the pain, taking mental notes along the way:
Breathing makes it worse, not aleviated by leaning forward, burping makes it go away for a few seconds... Meanwhile, the simultaneous Mind MD search triggered by the pain sensors in my brain had suggested several possible causes for the pain:
pancreatic cancer: no, can't be that. leaning forward is supposed to ease the pain. breathing should have no effect. Whew! What a relief!
lung cancer: a.k.a. a long, painful, humiliating death. Hmm. It's very possible, given
my history and all.
anxiety: No! Because that doesn't cause death.
pulled muscle from lugging child lugging
oversized doll while dancing the
lambada in my arms: Ya think?
Needless to say, looking back now, after taking a lorazepam, drowning my sorrows in a nice, thick, chocolate malt, and making 3 phone calls to my mother, I finally resigned myself to the fact that it is most definitely a pulled muscle.
But that doesn't explain the unrelentless itching in my left boob, now, does it?
I was fine until this evening, when I decided to take my daughter to Macy's and, well, to make a long story short, the shopping trip culminated with her draping a towel over her head and running down an aisle screeching as loud as she could, and then me carrying her, squirming and writhing about, under my left arm while I pushed the childless stroller with my right. And then, it started. As I sat down in the driver's seat and started the car, I noticed a funny pain in the upper left quadrant of my back.
I stopped for a moment to analyze the pain, taking mental notes along the way:
Breathing makes it worse, not aleviated by leaning forward, burping makes it go away for a few seconds... Meanwhile, the simultaneous Mind MD search triggered by the pain sensors in my brain had suggested several possible causes for the pain:
pancreatic cancer: no, can't be that. leaning forward is supposed to ease the pain. breathing should have no effect. Whew! What a relief!
lung cancer: a.k.a. a long, painful, humiliating death. Hmm. It's very possible, given
my history and all.
anxiety: No! Because that doesn't cause death.
pulled muscle from lugging child lugging
oversized doll while dancing the
lambada in my arms: Ya think?
Needless to say, looking back now, after taking a lorazepam, drowning my sorrows in a nice, thick, chocolate malt, and making 3 phone calls to my mother, I finally resigned myself to the fact that it is most definitely a pulled muscle.
But that doesn't explain the unrelentless itching in my left boob, now, does it?
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