Ultrasound

Monday, August 26 2002

C__. Dr. P__. 10:00AM
I don't think I have ever been more afraid...
I went for the ultrasound this morning. I lay on the table thinking about our plans this week. But something was wrong. She went and got the radiologist. Neither looked me in the eye and she kept glancing at him. He asked alot of questions. I knew it was serious.
I have been thinking that maybe my time is up. I have been so amazed lately at my incredible family-at my incredible fortune. Maybe this is it. Certianly it is more than I ever dreamed of having and I do feel like I have dealt with some of the things I was sent here to work out. At first, I was OK with this-accepting my good fortune for such a short time. But now, I am just scared. And sad. I am not ready. I want to see my girls grow into women. I want to be old and happy and crazy with R and drive around in our Westfalia. I am scared.

I am in the ultrasound room. I wait as the tech rubs my lumpy belly with gel. We are talking about the twins. She recognizes me from before, I was here so many times in the last months of pregnancy-twice a month. She asks how the birth was, if things are going ok.. And then she is quiet. I don't notice right away, but she stops initiating converstaion, answers my questions briefly, professionally, revealing nothing.
Revealing everything.
I know there is something wrong. And still, I doubt myself. I am just overracting, being melodramatic.

R often says I am being melodramatic. Sometimes I am. Sometimes the fear and anxiety is more than I can handle and it takes a hold of me. I have been calm lately, though. Calm and at peace. I have a sense of acomplishment that is tangible, solid like a monument of stone. I am nursing healthy twin babies. Identical beautiful four-month-old girls that audibly slurp and gulp as they hungrily drink from my swolen breasts. I am healthy and beautiful and strong and I am nurturing, holding it all together, holding the family together. I am a mother. I am present and I am happy and I am bemused at my good fortune, but grateful.

The Tech finishes and says that she wants the Radiologist to take a look. I lay on the bed and look at the ceiling, feeling the surreality and feeling a dark calm. I know something is wrong.

The Radiologist comes in. His name is Dr. P__. He sits down and silently moves the sonograph wand across my abdomen. He finishes without speaking to the tech. He wipes my belly clean of gel and asks me to get dressed and come to his office.

I am in a dream. I am sleep walking. I do not feel emotion at all. I dress and walk to his office. I do not remember the conversation. I know he tells me that I have large tumors, enlarged lymph nodes that he thinks are lymphoma. He has booked a CT for 7:30am the next morning. Wow, I think. That is special service, I have heard it is hard to get a CT. The CT will confirm what he is already fairly certain of: that I have cancer. He wants to know what kind, and how far it is spread. I shake his hand and say thank you. He looks very sad and serious.

I walk out to the waiting room, where there are young pregnant women and their partners waiting to see their baby for the first time. R is sitting, reading a magazine. He stands up and we walk to the elevator. In the elevator, I tell him that it was not a fibroid but a tumor. He is quiet and I cry.