Fear of leaving the one's you love....
When Aunt Annie got her diagnosis of cancer she was afraid of suffering...the transition, that's what scared her.
The last time I spoke to her that fear turned to sadness, the sadness of leaving her loved one's. I always wondered what one thing or at what point that changed. Well, I guess that one thing would be the cancer but, at what point did it change from fear to sadness? Was it when she came to realize that her death was inevitable? Although I was curious it's just not something you ask when someone's dying.
Recently I had a bit of a health scare and it could've been life threatening if it went untreated. Before the doctors pinpointed the exact issue there were some mentions of cancer. Damn that word... but unlike Aunt Annie, my first thought was how would I tell my boys, I wasn't afraid of anything else. Even when all the tests were pointing towards a possible diagnosis of something deadly I wasn't scared for myself, I wonder why??
After all the tests were completed and showed my body was already producing signs of it's potential danger, it wasn't a huge surprise to me. For me the signs showed up much earlier. I haven't felt good for some time now and knew something wasn't right. Which reminded me of a conversation I had with Aunt Annie in 2009 when I last saw her. She kept telling her doctors she didn't feel good and making appointments with them even though they couldn't find anything wrong with her. A year later she was diagnosed with cancer but not before she was labled a hypercondriac by her doctors. Even some family members questioned it and that hurt her immensely.
We live in our bodies 24/7, 365 days a year so I firmly believe we know before anyone else when something is wrong. And that's what I told her, I believed her sincerity and the validity of her complaints to her doctors. It's kind of like with your car, you know how it rides, the sounds it makes, etc....so anything that sounds different or feels different you know it. I know I've said, "that don't feel right or that don't sound right". We know our cars and we know our bodies.
Yes, with some people there's that fine line of being paranoid, the little boy who cried wolf comes to mind and not every ache and pain is a death sentence. Sadly in Aunt Annies case it was....
I'm so lucky to have a doctor that knows me and more importantly listens to me. Because of my persistance and detailed description of my symptoms he ordered some tests that are normally not performed this early. Some of his peers even questioned the necessity of the testing. Thankfully he didn't crack under the pressure from them and defended his decision with a passion. By the way did I mention he's Italian!
I'm going to need surgery to correct the issue. But once I do I should be good as new. I guess it just wasn't my time.......I'm thankful for that and hopefully my boys are too!
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