[Every once in a while, we have to go something that blows. Something we’re not prepared for. Something, that at least, makes a good story…]

I looked down at my shirt, suddenly wondering if it was too revealing for this slightly backwoods New England waiting room. The few other people also waiting for the doctor were mostly over 40, fans of crocs and t-shirts advertising farm stands, and all seemed to be looking at me over their glasses or magazines. I turned back to the wall and checked my watch; I really wanted to get out of here so I could swing by Marshalls before handing the car over to my parents. A week out of the city had its perks – and cheap clothing was one of them.

The doctor herself opened the door to the waiting room and looked at me, motioning with her hand that I should follow her. I got up, vaguely wondering why she had come out to get me herself. After all, I had just gone in for a simple x-ray; proof that a dislocated rib I acquired as a kid was still dislocated.

Instead of walking inside an examination room, we stepped into her office, and she pushed my x-rays up on a light board so I could see them. Something looked strange. I blinked.

“So, you can see, right there, you’ve got a tumor on your ninth rib.”

A what? Huh? I shook my head. I felt like she was speaking French. I couldn’t understand.

“Now, I don’t think this is a chemotherapy-lose-your-hair-die-kind of thing.” The doctor breathed through her nose and made no attempt to make her voice tender or even half-heartedly nice. “From what I can tell from this, it’s probably going to be benign. But it needs to come out.”

What? I shook my head and touched her bookcase, needing something to keep my feet bolted to the floor. I felt like I was going to fall over and I still couldn’t understand what she was saying.

“I’ll have someone call now and schedule a cat scan. We need to get thing going.”

This is when the tears started. I was hearing all these words and had only moments before been thinking about $20 pants. Tumor, cancer, cat scan…I think the tears came because my gut understood before my brain did: something is wrong.

“I know this might be a little difficult,” the doctor went to a book on her desk and flipped through some pages, “sorry.”

I stood and watched and listened and realized that this is what shock felt like.

“See?” She lifted the book up and pointed to some pictures. “This is bone cancer. You don’t have that.”

Falling heavily into a chair, I stared at the book and at my not-very-sympathetic doctor, hating the tears that were covering everything in a wet, simmering sheen. I don’t cry in public. It’s a weakness I refuse to give into. But this. All these sh*tty words that were only now burrowing themselves into my brain…I had to let go of something. And so my composure drew the short straw.

Like a kid I asked if I could call my parents, and within an hour I was filling out paperwork in a neighboring hospital, initialing a space on a piece of paper that told the cat scan tech he could inject me with dye. By this time, my dad had joined me, but being a veteran of weird hospital visits, I learned early that these types of situations are always experienced alone. No matter who’s sitting next to you, who’s holding your hand, what anyone says, you always go through this stuff alone.

“You’ve got small veins.” An older guy in blue scrubs flicked his finger lightly over the inside of my elbow. I had transferred myself from the typical brown hospital waiting room chair to the table of a CT machine, lying down with both my arms flopped out like some revealing-shirted crucifix impersonation. “I think I found one, but you can never be too careful.” The tech guy smiled as he rubbed a cold alcohol pad over my skin. “Worked in an ambulance for eight years though, so I’m usually alright.”

I gritted my teeth and breathed out as the needle slipped underneath my skin.

“This is what you’re gonna feel.” Tech Guy pushed some saline through the needle. “First, you’re gonna feel hot all over, then you’re going to taste something metallic in the back of your throat, and then it’s gonna feel like you peed your pants – but you didn’t.”

He smiled over me and I tried to smile back. Everything he said sounded fine except the peeing the pants part. I wanted to ask if people accidentally peed their pants while they were “feeling” like they were – but I stopped myself.

“Okay, here it goes!”

“I don’t feel anyth – ” But of course, before the words were out of my mouth and before the tech guy even walked away, my body was suddenly flooded with the oddest burning sensation ever. The CT machine started to buzz and whir and spin and I breathed when it told me to and then, sure enough, there was a weird “my crotch is all hot like I just peed” sensation. It was over before I could fully grasp how funny it was, and soon I was sliding out from under the machine and was feeling the always fun rip! of an IV being taken out.

In a few days there’ll be a biopsy to make 100% sure this weird egg-sized lump is truly benign, and the visit will most likely also include scheduling a surgery date. The thing about me and surgery is that I have a serious hospital phobia, so even if the procedure is (hopefully!!) relatively simple, I’ve still got a whole set of schizo behaviors to look forward to. This does not make me the happiest camper in the canoe, but as always, things could be much worse.

I’ll just force them to amp up the morphine. I’m good at persuasion.

Updates will undoubtedly unfold as I figure this shiz out myself…