The date was October 1st, 2012. I sensed that something was up the minute the doctor came into the room. She didn’t say hello in quite the same way. She got down to business right away. “They did find something,” she said. Just a few minutes before I remember waiting for the doctor to come in. My husband and I were in the doctor’s office waiting for the results from the blood cytometry test. When you are waiting to hear results from a blood test, or any test, the mintues tick by at a dreadfully slow pace. Will there be something, or will it be ok? Will this anxiety finally be over? Will I be able to just forget about this whole thing and move on? Sitting, waiting, your mind goes back and forth from ”It’s nothing”, and then, “maybe it’s something, what if it’s something?”, and then, “it must be nothing”. Back and forth your mind goes, like the pendulum on a grandfather’s clock.

Then, the door opened and I drew in my breath. The doctor came into the room and she said, “They did find something.”

She began talking about Lymphoma and the different types of Lymphoma and how more testing would be necessary to determine which kind. Confusion and disbelief swirled through my head. Is this really happening? Is this a dream? Have I stepped through some type of bizarre looking glass? WIll I wake up tomorrow and this will have never happened?

I needed to ask a direct question. “Do I have Lymphoma?” I stammered. I could barely pronounce the word. I actually stumbled over it a few times. The doctor said, “Yes.” I asked one more question. “Is that cancer?” The doctor said…..”Yes.”

The doctor continued and said that I would need to get a CT scan to check for, among other things, if my spleen was enlarged. I remember feeling my face move. My eyes defintely got larger. Strange thoughts went through my head. I thought, “My spleen wound not turn on me like that, it’s part of me. It wouldn’t go against me.” Thankfully when the doctor examined me she said that it did not feel like it was enlarged, but that the CT scan would tell for sure. She said that the scan would also show if I had any enlarged lymph nodes. She also mentioned that I would need to get a bone marrow biopsy.

In that moment, scheduling those two tests suddenly felt like the most important and urgent thing in my life. I thought, my schedule is open – whenever they have time, I will be there. Work seemed like a vague notion. I will take a personal day. If I have a meeting, I will cancel or postpone. Things that seemed so important before suddenly had no meaning. There was new meaning now, there were new priorities. We never think about our health – we take it for granted unless or until something happens to it.

I also thought about my husband sitting next to me. We had just been married four months earlier, almost to the day. I felt like apologizing – we were just starting a new life together and then I received this diagnosis. He had lost two close family members in the past to cancer. I felt sorry to burden him with the fact that I had an illness.

The doctor asked if I had any questions. I began to cry just a little bit. I apologized. I said, I’m sorry, but this is just really shocking. She agreed and was very patient, ready to answer any question I might have. Finally, when she was getting ready to leave, she told me not to worry. Somehow, the way that she said it, I felt like she really meant it. I clung to her words as if they were a teddy bear or a soft warm blanket. She had led me to this looking glass world and I had stepped through into it. There was a new path I had to embark on but I held her words close to me as I began on my journey.