Think Big, Live Tiny - Part 6

Life Changing Circumstances - Part 2

If you have not already read Part 1 of this story, you might want to before continuing… I have just been told “…you have a large mass in your abdomen, you need to go home and tell your family, they need time to prepare…”

SUMMER 2003

“I don’t know what it is,” she says. But I can tell from the look on her face that she is as scared for me as I am. “We’ll fly you to Oahu for a CAT scan to get more information, then we’ll discuss a plan of action. Right now, I’m sending you down the hall for a chest x-ray. I’ll have them schedule the CAT scan, check at the main desk on your way out for the date.” She is young, I theorize. Perhaps there’s no easy way to break bad news and she hasn’t gotten comfortable with a more compassionate way of doing it yet. I won’t shoot the messenger. Besides, my words have left me.

I leave the room in a somnambulistic state. It feels like I’m in a dream, walking in honey. Are my feet even touching the ground? The everyday office sounds of voices, phones ringing, and doors opening and closing, have all blurred together into buzzing white noise. I no longer feel anxious, just numb. Am I going to die? Huh! I didn’t see it going down like this. The preternatural calm before the storm is odd.

I go through the motions of the chest x-ray. I’m told it’s normal. Ok, well there’s that – I’m not sure what they were looking for anyway. The bulge is in my tummy not my chest. Maybe this is nothing after all? In retrospect, my determination to stay in denial is impressive.

“SIX WEEKS?” I’m finally rousted from my shock. Now it’s time to shoot the messenger.

“I’m sorry Miss Leslee, it’s the soonest we could get you in.” The secretary truly does sound empathetic.

“I have to wait six weeks to find out what’s going on? What if it’s serious?”

The poor secretary is obviously used to having to deal with this. It’s business as usual here in Hawai’i where everything takes as long as it takes. Normally Hawai’i Time is quaint, funny, even charming, and part of what I love most about living here. Finally, a place where being late isn’t treated as inconsiderate, lazy, or unprofessional, it’s just the way of the island. And if you don’t get it, you’re not cool, you don’t belong here. But this is different. This is my life we’re playing with.

I had just broken up with James two weeks ago, but there wasn’t a lot of animosity, so he was my first phone call.

“Can I come over?” My voice shakes.

“Sure, I’m home, what’s up?”

“Can it wait till I get there? I just need someone to talk to.”

“Yeah, come on over, see you soon.”

I walk into his house in a trance, still in shock. We sit on a loveseat on his lanai. He puts his arm around me and I spill my guts, bleeding my vulnerability and tears all over his blue shirt. He makes some comforting noises, pats my shoulder, and looks off towards the ocean, then starts sharing with me his own fear of death. It takes me a minute to realize this has suddenly become all about him. This adds a welcome moment of levity for me – my dark sense of humor bubbles up. I try hard not to laugh at his misplaced sincerity. I realize that when someone close is staring down death, it triggers the recognition of our own mortality. This very human response is one I vow to be aware of when the shoe is on the other foot for me – if I live long enough to be in that position that is.

*****

During the next six weeks, I will have lots of time to think. I detach as much as I can from my normal agenda. I’m able to schedule my private massage clients so that I have a lot of downtime to meditate on life and death. I spend numerous hours sitting on my lanai gazing towards the horizon, looking at nothing in particular. If it’s cancer, I think practically, I’ll sell my house and go to Mexico to the Gerson Institute and do their program. I don’t know how much it costs, but surely what I will get from selling my house will cover it.

I have always felt that you don’t know until it happens to you, what you will do in the case of a cancer diagnosis. After all that I’ve learned about Western medicine in the past decade, I’ve always suspected I would choose a natural, more alternative route and bypass chemotherapy. But still, you don’t know what you will choose until those cards are actually on your table.

What I hadn’t given much thought to was how easy it would be to completely let go of all the attachments I have to my home and possessions. Poof, gone. Funny how it takes possibly losing your life to realize how unimportant all this stuff is. I find myself inordinately calm once I have made this decision.

I discover six weeks later that I only have a gigantic, non-malignant ovarian cyst, the size of a volleyball, dear god. I wonder briefly why that potential diagnosis was never discussed. Why I was led to believe that the only possible alternative was cancer? I mean, who knew a cyst could get that big without bursting? Well, I would think the doctor would know. But it’s clear from the relief in her voice, all her charm has now returned, as she gives me the good news, and that she was surprised also.

I go through the motions of having it surgically removed. But when I return home, my feelings about my house are in that same ambivalent place. None of that has changed. The pride and connection I once felt are gone. I will hold on to the house for a few more years until my daughter has finished high school – a practical plan. But after that, I already know I will be selling it and doing some major downsizing and life re-organizing.

A health scare is not the only event that can change the course of your life in an instant. But sometimes it does take something that big to shake us up. To ask the big questions: What am I doing here? Am I making a difference? Is this what I want? If I could have anything, what would it be? If I knew I was going to die within a year or sooner, how would I live my life?

Are these events inevitable? Do we come into this life with them written into our karma? Or are they a last-ditch effort by our angels to shake us up and make us pay attention to what really matters? Either way, I chose to view this wake-up call as a blessing and a call to action.

Dedicated to my friend Alia who did succumb to cancer several years after this picture was taken, and to all the warriors past an present fighting this dreadful condition.