Hip hip hooray ...

... the biopsy, she is benign!

Three months after I got on that tilt-a-whirl, I am finally -- and gloriously -- off it.

That was no "E Ticket". More like a bad funhouse at a ride-all-you-can-handle amusement park.

A most UN-fun funhouse!

**phew**

I'm re-posting here an entry from another blog I have kept for a while. Looking back at it, it is a bracing reminder that I have moved through so much Fear and survived it, finding gifts of possibility, of choice, of hope there on the other side. As much as I fear (or even wish fervently for, on occasion) "the End", the scarier thought is actually living that End before it comes.

It'll come eventually ... but what do I do between now and then? I have to believe that that's what counts. That that's what I have to work with, and the attendant rights, responsibilities and "blank canvas" it implies.

Having hope in hand in again -- that changes everything. I want more of it. More hope.

"Lump. Lesion. Mass. Mystery.

Whatever you call it ... by whatever name ... it strikes fear in the heart. Nobody uses it the first time around. Instead, there is "the need for additional imaging", "further diagnostic tests", and further in, you start to hear those words from the people you never want to hear them from. Eighty percent of these interlopers are benign.

But 20% aren't.

So they are going after me with needles today. Let joy be unconfined! I'd rather be handling snakes than doing this. And then -- the waiting. The absurd prospect of waiting 'til next Tuesday afternoon to meet with the doctor to hear whether or not all these weeks of utter fear, of something bordering on existential dread, was even warranted.

If it wasn't? Hooray. Let's go out and poultice the worry wounds. Maybe grab a sundae and hit a matinee.

If it was?

If it is?

Malignant, I mean. The "C" word. Maybe still ice cream, and movies. But I've known the "shock" state before, and anything I do during that time comes, inevitably, to be attached to that roiling, boiling turmoil beneath the surface of the temporary emotional permafrost. My sense of humor (normally one of my tools to handle Life As We Know It) disappears. The colors melt away from my eyes. The ground beneath me undulates. I feel consumed.

Thought: If I have the big "C", I am going to cast off some of the old rules. I am going to tell people what I really think. Even if the syrupy sentiments embarass them, or the candor discomforts them. I have held back on a lot, for a long time. Learned not to rock boats, big or little. And if I don't have it?

No "C"? I'll still revisit those rules. Question who made them, and why I ought to follow them at all. Instead of excising tumors, I may decide to eliminate that creeping necrosis of the unattended soul. Decide that enough is enough of giving all the best parts of myself away, and taking other peoples' garbage out. They can take their own garbage out. and I'll take care of mine. One way or another. "C" or no C.

So -- here's to hope, no matter what the outcome is. Emily Dickinson's "thing with feathers that perches in the soul". Hope is good. I will take a double scoop of hope ... With jimmies."

L.A.E.