Best Words I’ve Ever Heard…

I love you with all of my heart. Till death do us part. In sickness and in health. I will. I do. You’re the love of my life. Grow old along with me; the best is yet to be. Will you marry me? It’s a girl; she’s perfect. It’s a boy; he’s perfect. Ten fingers and ten toes. There’s another baby in there. The surgery went fine. The results of the tests were good. Yours is the winning lottery ticket. Hello, we’re from Publisher’s Clearing House! You’re being promoted. You’re getting a raise. Found your keys. Found your wallet. Found your purse. You came in first place. You’re receiving the Most Valuable Player award. You’re in the pageant. You’re the soloist. You won the lead. Your manuscript has been accepted for publication. Yeah, Baby! Heard some of these? I’ve heard a few. Make you smile? Make you feel good? Me, too, but none of those top the best words I’ve ever heard as of last fall. Straight from my oncologist (I love Dr. Manno): “You’re doing great.” It just doesn’t get any better than that! Since that time, there has been sad news at school as a teacher’s husband died from brain cancer within a very short time of being diagnosed. Now, another teacher has been diagnosed with cancer. One thing we know for sure; cancer is an equal opportunity employer (attacker). Most of the time, I feel lucky and blessed that I got off as easy as I did. If you’ve read any of this before, you know I didn’t think it was easy at the time. You never really get beyond cancer. Well, probably some people do, but I’m not one of them. Now, I’m facing up to having the port removed. I’m scared. I’m scared of hospitals. I scared of procedures. I’ve asked about the situation in that I’ve had a broken collarbone in between the port and my heart, but the oncology nurse and Kathi’s friend, who is a P.A., both said if that was going to be a problem, it would have been one a long time ago. O.K., that’s good. The nurse and Donna both told me that I’ll be awake through the whole thing; that’s not happy. They will watch a heart monitor to make sure my heart doesn’t go crazy when they start pulling the tubing out. Great! Then they will continue to watch to make sure I’m good to go. Simple. Fifteen minutes. I don’t believe in elective surgery. Sounds like an oxymoron to me. So, I always think the worst…glass half empty, hexes, bad karma, etc. I need Krista to go with me. She saw me through so many other situations in which I was a big baby, I think she’s the woman for the job. I hope Kathi comes, too. If anything goes wrong, Krista’s going to need her. Here I go again…strike that hex. I had to choose the day carefully. I can’t do it on the 12th because my mother died on the 12th in 1997. I can’t do it on the 13th because that’s just plain unlucky; triskaidekaphobia folks get that. Then the 15th is my mother’s birthday, can’t do it then…so the 14th is what it is. The procedure to insert the port was a walk in the park, a piece of cake. I hope I’ll be walking in the park and eating a piece of cake after the 14th. If all goes well, I’ll report back so that other cancer survivors won’t be scared like me to have their ports removed. It if doesn’t go well, then someone else can walk in the park while eating a piece of cake.