The Biopsy

So there is Something Not Quite Right Going On and I’ll have to undergo a biopsy soon. Biopsy is one of those poisonous words fraught with emotions, fright, despair and depression. It implies a dreaded disease—cancer—when actually all it is, according to an online medical dictionary is the removal and examination, usually microscopic, of tissue from the living body, performed to establish precise diagnosis. That sounds a lot less worrisome.

Still, the procedure, in this case, implies total anesthesia, something I am not good at. Years ago, I woke up during an operation to fix an umbilical hernia and that was not pleasant at all. At the dentist’s, I need doubles doses of Novocain. My body metabolizes drugs very quickly and I never quite seem to get the dosage I need. Plus, this latest incursion into my body will have to be done in a real operating room, and I am very much like Michael Scott of The Office when it comes to hospitals. I associate them, with illness and death and other unpleasant things. I’m also very aware that all hospitals are giant incubators for every malady known to man, and that’s not at all reassuring.

The real issue, though, is that my parents had cancer, and while my father beat it, both my mother and my late sister died from the disease. In my heart of hearts, I have been waiting for decades for the bad news to be announced: “Sorry to tell you but you have cancer of this, that, and the other.”

I am not as frightened as I was two days ago, and the strange thing is that frighten is actually the wrong word. I wasn’t scared; I was sad, bordering on tears, vastly disappointed in life and in myself for not handling it better. It seemed to me that after four decades of steeling myself for the news, I should have been prepared for the worst—which this is not. I got really maudlin, which I hate in myself even more than I hate it in others.

By yesterday, a full anger had taken over. My body is betraying me, after I’ve treated it pretty well tghese last 20 years. Where’s the fairness in that?

So now I’m waiting for the call to set up the appointment for the biopsy. More will be revealed.