This post is hard to write as it criticises the people who love me the most but warts and all the story needs to be told.
On returning home with my report I handed it to hubby, who studied it, looked up at me and said “well that’s all good then” I couldn’t believe my ears! “I’m sorry Steve are we on different fucking planets” I snapped back. Steve had seen the list of normals and I think he hung onto every normal word in the list, maybe he was scared too, maybe he hadn’t read it properly or maybe he was just in denial and wanting to protect me.
I phoned the doctor and managed to get an appointment that evening. The Doctor explained to me that yes we were looking at it being cancerous, that it’s whether the biopsies turn out to be benign or malignant. She said that the results should be one to two weeks and that to start chasing the results in one week if I haven’t heard anything. She signed me off for another two weeks from work, told us to cancel our booked and paid for holiday as we couldn’t risk being away if this thing inside me burst.
This was still Wednesday. There then followed the most lonely time of this journey, I’m still in pain and have been for weeks, I’m stuck at home awaiting results and no one will talk to me. We talk about the weather and what’s for tea, we talk about anything but what was going on. Mom and Steve just play endless games of scrabble and every few minutes I just wanted to cry. Did no one care about me, am I just alone stuck in this nightmare? Why is no one sad? Why is everyone ignoring me?
I remember talking to mommy Alison from work about how I felt, that helped as she was kind and not dismissive but once the phone went down I was back again stuck in my lonely world of worry.
By Friday night I’d had all I could take so I grabbed a bottle of wine from the rack after mom had gone to bed and it was just the two of us, I opened it and poured myself a glass. I announced to Steve that I was going to drink that bottle and then maybe open another bottle and I didn’t care! After about 1/2 hour Steve finally said “is there anything you wanted to talk about?” That was it for me, we stayed up drinking wine for about 4 hours, I cried and cried but he didn’t. That didn’t matter as I just wanted to let off steam, my fears, my concerns for fucks sake in less than a week someone would say either the words benign or malignant and our world may change forever. Life can turn on a sixpence, we all take health, love, family and happiness for granted it’s natural but when your life, the one you have devoted time and love into is threatened it can suddenly leave you feeling very cold, empty and worst of all alone.
Little did I know but Steve had been researching bowel cancer online and I believe he was just trying to be positive and by believing in this the love of his life (that’s me LOL) was going to be okay, he just had to keep on believing.
