If only it was just drama

A month ago I had (and probably still have) very little knowledge about how to navigate this (cancer). Not so much medically. I have really, really great doctors.

More so, I'm in unfamiliar waters emotionally.

The actual news seemed to feel like it came in slow motion. 

First there was a CT scan. It turns out, everyone in the medical community associated with this CT scan knew immediately this was probably cancer.

Then there was more blood work and a PET CT scan. Everyone involved medically definitely knew at that point I had cancer, but I still didn't yet.

And two days before I was scheduled to have one more procedure, I learned it was in fact cancer. 

But even before most of that, members of the care team were suggesting I should have narcotic pain medication, anti-nausea meds, and even needed to go to a full-time work from home arrangement. 

I'm not kidding when I tell you I thought they were being pretty dramatic. 

But, as it turns out, they were not crazy. 

This might be the time in which a member of my immediate family (who shall remain anonymous) might remind me that I do not, in fact, have the letters MD behind my name. 

They'd remember the ceremony. 

I've heard stories about how long things like this can take. A day feels like a month, a month like a year. It didn't feel that way to me. February 2025 was a bad month don't get me wrong. But it blew by like it almost didn't happen. Because on February 4, 2025 I learned I had cancer. And on February 12, just eight days later I learned what would change everything about everything. 

My apologies if you are someone in my life (or by extension you're in my life) who is going to learn this for the first time by reading it on this blog. I've done my best to talk to so many people either by phone, text, or in-person. 

I have stage four metastatic GIST cancer in my liver*, which originated from the GIST that heartbreakingly returned from the original tumor in 2019 and became cancerous and metastasized (aka moved) to my liver. 

There's a lot more to unpack, and I think that's enough for one day. In part because of what I said...one of the strange (to me) emotions at the beginning of all of this was that (again, to me) it all felt so dramatic. Including telling people. To be very honest, I feel dramatic writing it.

Perhaps though, at least something to chew on for further consideration, is that I just do not want it to be real. Five weeks in, there's a large part of me that still doesn't want to acknowledge it is.

*to avoid confusion, it's important I emphasize while there is cancer in my liver, I do not have liver cancer. That's a very different diagnosis. I'll explain more as we go.