The Raddest ‘blog on the ‘net.

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Looking Right Through Me

It’s Sunday night and I’m cooking salmon outside. My normal dinner nights are Tuesday and Thursday, but Diane doesn’t grill. Even a thick fillet only takes ten minutes, and because I’ve got something to say to Diane in private, before Matt appears growling for dinner, I hurriedly ask, “Diane, what are you doing tomorrow?”:

Diane: “What do you mean, what am I doing tomorrow?”

Me: “What do you mean by what do I mean? What’s your schedule?”

Diane: “You know my schedule. Why are you asking?”

Me: “What do you mean, why am I asking? Can I ask a more innocent question? Tell me what you’re doing!”

Diane: “Tell me what’s really up.”

Me: “I can’t ask what you’re doing on a particular day without you thinking I have an agenda?”

Diane: “No you can’t. You know what I do on Mondays.”

“What’s for dinner?” Matt bounds down early.

“Salmon and it’s almost ready, ” I answer, happy for the distraction. I figure Diane will forget my question by the time we finish eating. It still gnaws at me that I’m so goddamn transparent to her. Dinner ends and Matthew slips out the door to Debbie’s. I get up to leave:

Diane: “Why did you ask me what I’m doing?”

Me: “Stop it. I just wanted to know what your schedule was.”

Diane. “Why? I know there is something up.”

Me. “Up? Nothing. N-O-T-H-I-N-G. Do you get it now?

Diane: “Tell me the truth.”

Me: “The truth is I want to strangle you.”

Diane: “After you tell me what’s wrong.”

Me: “Wrong, now something is wrong?”

Diane: “What is it.”

Me. “I found a lump on my side early last week and I’m having it checked out tomorrow.”

“How big is it and why didn’t you tell me?”

“You have enough on your mind; it feels like a small Easter Egg. I emailed the doctor’s office and they said come right in. I assume it’s nothing, but with everything going on, I figure it’s best to have someone else tell me it’s nothing. Then I can forget about it.”

Monday I’m off doing estimates, but I make it to Dr. Long’s office at 4:30. The nurse tells me to remove my shirt, which I do, and then I sit and wait. Instead of focusing on the flab pouring over my belt, I pick up a Time magazine, but then Dr. Long walks in. He smiles as though we’re old friends, and proceeds to tell me about his son who attends St. Lawrence University, but has this semester abroad at James Cook University in Northern Queensland, and how he and his wife will visit him in Australia and then travel to New Zealand, and how much it costs to call him and how his son will say call him on Friday, but when he does his son says, “But, Dad, it’s Saturday,” and on and on.

Finally, he stops and says, “So, what about you?”

“I have this lump.”

“Does it hurt?

“No.”

“How long has it been there?”

“You know, I don’t know. I don’t feel myself up as often as I used to.”

He walks over, puts his fingers together and moves my lump around.

“It’s a benign tumor called a lipoma. If it grows it might be a liposarcoma, a malignant cancer, but I’ve only seen two of those in twenty-five years. Ninety-nine to one it’s benign.”

“Good. That’s all I wanted to hear. But because I’m going to get asked this question, if it is cancerous and I’m just waiting around to see if it is, do I lessen my chances of survival?”

“No, because if it is you don’t have any anyway.”

posted by michael at 8:31 pm  

27 Comments »

  1. Why can’t they just cut it out and make it go away?

    I don’t like your doctors’ sense of humor by the way.

    Comment by La Rad — March 28, 2006 @ 9:38 pm

  2. I suddenly wish Michael were known for his penchant for and skill at fiction … Please do NOT let a rakkityesque month go by before chapter two. Jesus LORD.

    Comment by adam — March 28, 2006 @ 11:09 pm

  3. I had to end with that last sentence because it made the best finale. Dr. Long reiterated that the chances, in his mind, of it not being benign were almost nil.

    Comment by michael — March 29, 2006 @ 6:17 am

  4. Did this Flippant Medico not suggest that you have the lipoma removed? Every lipoma I have ever heard about was plucked right out surgically. Are you telling us that FM told you that your only course of action was to do nothing? Or, did he offer you several options and you chose the live-with-it one?

    Comment by FierceBaby — March 29, 2006 @ 9:11 am

  5. What’s with the sudden love for the word ‘flippant’? First Maureen Dowd is a flippant buffoon, and now Dr Long is a flippant medico….

    Comment by pesky godson — March 29, 2006 @ 10:43 am

  6. And all this time I thought Adam was calling me a flippant buffoon.

    Comment by michael — March 29, 2006 @ 12:45 pm

  7. He was.

    Comment by el Kib — March 29, 2006 @ 1:19 pm

  8. There was no discussion about the lipoma beyond what I’ve written and one example Dr. Long gave of a patient of his who had a liposarcoma which resisted excising and all other forms or treatment. It continued to grow until the poor chap was one big tumor. Or something like that.

    I wrote this because I enjoyed Diane’s junk yard dog grip on my no-so-innocent question. When I read what I wrote, I laugh. I thought others would laugh too. When I read the last line of this little ditty, I laugh hard. I thought others would too. If I thought I’d get grilled on the blog and in private about this thing on my side, I would have, instead, posted a photo of the purple crocus in my yard.

    Comment by michael — March 29, 2006 @ 7:08 pm

  9. Get a grip.

    Comment by FierceBaby — March 29, 2006 @ 8:15 pm

  10. Where’s your neck?

    Comment by michael — March 29, 2006 @ 8:27 pm

  11. I think it means we love you. (Not necessarily the grip and neck parts, which I won’t comment on further because I’m not sure I follow.)

    Talk about laughing. I just re-read the “resisted excising” part and realized that it did NOT imply that many liposarcomas disappear with exercise.

    Comment by Jennifer — March 29, 2006 @ 9:42 pm

  12. Lipomaman, anything containing the word “lump” supercedes spousal conversations. Now just have the damn thing taken out. Perhaps you can even get them to photograph it for you.

    Comment by La Rad — March 29, 2006 @ 11:05 pm

  13. And how about that purple crocus? I’m dying for something colorful around here.

    Comment by pesky godson — March 29, 2006 @ 11:50 pm

  14. Jennifer, you think because they are fatty tumors that maybe you can whittle them down with treadmill work?

    And, Pesky, I wonder if this scratchy brown time of year is less of a sense assaulter in the city. You get warmth and color.

    La Rad, how about if you combine the two. As in, “I could have married a lump of cow dung for all you do around the house.” I hear that quite often.

    And back to Jennifer, how come no science class on yesterday’s total eclipse?

    Comment by michael — March 30, 2006 @ 6:17 am

  15. Lipoma

    Michael, my dad had a little garden of these guys up and down both arms, in his fifties. They took some of them out, but as I recall they kept coming back. Made his arms look lumpy.

    Probably all the fat that shoulda gone to pad your butt took a detour on its way down, found a nice place to settle, and there you have it.

    Glad that’s all it is.

    I probably shouldn’t tell Diane that you told me about this, very casually, last weekend, before she gave you your very deserved grilling?

    Comment by smiling Dan — March 30, 2006 @ 7:15 am

  16. No, you shouldn’t. As you know, my goal in life, is too keep her safe from all extraneous information.

    Comment by michael — March 30, 2006 @ 8:58 am

  17. You mean then she might not know about…oh never mind.

    Comment by La Rad — March 30, 2006 @ 9:31 am

  18. Bravo Dan, for the first plausible theory concerning the long-standing somatic mystery of Michael’s putative posterior! Though there’d hafta be more than one “small Easter Egg” …

    Comment by el Kib — March 30, 2006 @ 9:35 am

  19. Thanks, La Rad, I always wanted to live in a cave in Kentucky.

    Comment by michael — March 30, 2006 @ 10:24 am

  20. well i’m glad that you are going to be ok

    stay in touch

    oh and all girls do that, all my friends think i have something up my sleeve too, no worries

    Comment by Goose — March 30, 2006 @ 11:14 am

  21. Yo Mike, what’s your chatting info, I’m lookin to test out the camera on my macbook.

    Comment by travis — March 30, 2006 @ 1:22 pm

  22. m_mmiller and try helenm6531 and you just might catch your dad and Peter.

    I ought to be home this evening, although with Diane out and Matthew away, who knows? I’m sort of always lit up.

    Comment by michael — March 30, 2006 @ 2:57 pm

  23. Who can follow a story like that? I’m not going to write any more near-death stories ever again after your gripping tale. OK, maybe after you give us the final resolution at the 99.99% level. 99% is not good enough.

    And where’s the photograph? So Beth can do a remote diagnosis? She’s the eagle-eye finder of my 1-mm melanoma 8 years ago (the smallest my doctor had ever seen). Egg size, you say? Gadzooks!

    Comment by rakkity — March 30, 2006 @ 5:20 pm

  24. Gadzooks, indeed! The very word I would have chosen had my brain not flash-frozen at the word “lump” …

    Comment by adam — March 30, 2006 @ 7:35 pm

  25. I’ve found the waiting is the worst part. I’m sure everything will turn out just fine, good luck though for the rough times.

    Comment by Debbie — April 4, 2006 @ 8:49 pm

  26. Everything has already turned out fine, and I agree with you, waiting is unpleasant, but, you know what, I bet you could teach us all something about patience. Start with me, then move to Diane, then toughen yourself on half the human race, and by then you might be ready to tackle Matthew.

    Comment by michael — April 5, 2006 @ 6:25 pm

  27. I just want to say thank you for taking the time & effort for put this web page together!

    Comment by Katrina — June 16, 2007 @ 7:43 pm

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment

Powered by WordPress