false alarm


so, tuesday morning, i got the "official" phone call that i had been waiting on.

yes, it's true. last friday morning at 8:10 i had my year-out follow-up scan. and the initial reading of that scan by dr. wade could not have been any more positive. i went through the ct machine four separate times. once, without the iodine contrast, two times with the iv hooked up and the dye flowing through my veins and one final time with the iv unhooked for good measure. i got my clothes on and sarah and i waited patiently for the man that took out my right kidney to come in and make us hip to what the scan revealed. he came in the and the first thing he said to me was, "happy anniversary". he had his very pleasant smile on his face and it was obvious that he wasn't worried in the least that the images were going to show anything other than the expected. he asked sarah and me if we'd like to come over with him to the computer and check things out. i asked him, respectfully, if i could wait until he could give me a "thumbs up" or "thumbs down". he grinned and said, "of course". so, i turned to the side and he pulled up the images. sarah watched the screen and i watched her face as he went through his checklist.

"spleen looks good."

"bladder looks good."

"stomach looks good."

"left kidney looks good."

and so on. he went through and looked at everything, and everything looked as it should on someone that's had one of their kidneys removed. and so i breathed a sigh of relief. time to celebrate, right?

well...

flash ahead to tuesday morning. i am mid-workout and my phone rings. i recognize the number. it's dr. wade's office. i pick up the phone and it's the ct technician that i started last friday morning with. her voice is kind of high and a little scratchy. she also has a little valley girl southern twang. this phone call, ideally, will be to tell me that the official radiologist report is in and confirms what dr. wade saw, which is nothing out of the ordinary. it will also tell me that the result of the chest x-ray.

"kevin, i just wanted to tell you that the radiologist looked at your ct images, and every thing there looked great,..."

"woohoo!", i said to myself and her at the same time.

she continues, "but..."

but. but? but, what? my forehead began to sweat.

"but, something showed up on your chest x-ray."

holy.

shit.

my stomach turned. i wanted to sit down but my legs wouldn't move. i stood there, destroyed. almost a full 365 days worth of panic and anxiety turned away came flooding back at me. i had already been told a year ago that if the type of cancer i had were to move, the most likely place it would go would be to my lungs, hence the chest x-ray that has accompanied all of my follow-ups.

"but, something showed up on your chest x-ray."

she then continued with what i should have heard as good news. "they don't know, exactly, what it is. it is very small, about two millimeters long. it could be a smudge or possibly a shadow. the part of your lung that they are looking at was actually captured on friday's ct. i took those images to the radiologist that read your chest x-ray and, as i was looking over his shoulder, he said he couldn't see anything."

"he is not worried."

"i am not worried."

"dr. wade is not concerned. if dr. wade was concerned, he would have called you, himself."

all good things. in that moment, though, i coudn't hear them. rather, i couldn't process them as good things. i could only fear the worst. i could only imagine this being "the other shoe". i was right. everyone else was wrong. my cancer was not all gone. in fact, it had moved to my lungs.

thankfully, it had not.

after coming down from my panic, we rescheduled a follow-up chest scan from thursday to wednesday of last week around lunchtime. i only had to wait about 24 hours after the phone call to hear and then process what everyone else was already certain of. that i was fine.

the same technician called me wednesday afternoon with the final piece of this follow-up's puzzle. the chest scan looked "completely normal". they suspected the mark on the chest x-ray was a "motion artifact".

"i am sorry you had to worry, but these things happen all the time."

not to me.

but to me, it happened.

what my reaction to the smudge on my chest x-ray tells me is a little cloudy. it had already been established that i have not rid myself completely of anxiety. i am still quite certain that, spiritually, i am not ready to pass from this place.

i thought, though, that i had worked on and succeeded in controlling my fears over the last six months. i thought that the sum of time and lexapro had given me an advantage over the irrational demons that lay in wait for my most vulnerable moments to present themselves.

maybe i haven't. maybe, in a sense, i don't want to. i don't know.

what i do know is that tuesday morning's false alarm will be remembered with just as much clarity as any piece of news i received last summer and in january, because it is every bit as much a part of this process of healing as the rest.

as i begin to wean myself off of the medication this week, surely i am better equipped than i used to be. to deal with those demons, that is.

we shall see.