12.16.2009

Awww...nuts.

Random thoughts about something from a month ago...

So a few days after my birthday last month, there was this scare here at our house. Without getting into the details too much, I can say that it occurred to me that something wasn't quite right, physically speaking. And after about a half a day's consideration (and no shortage of just flat-out fear, to be honest) I finally called a doctor and made an appointment.

And again, dispensing with the details, I got forwarded from this initial doctor's visit along to another place to get some more information about the possible problem.

You see, something wasn't quite right about one of my twin boys, the beans, nuts...well...plenty of names for them. My immediate thought was "cancer" because so little else ever happens with those things, at least not anything you hear too much about. And there was definitely something there, just didn't quite know what it was yet.

Well I'll relieve any of you holding your breath at this point by saying that the doctors ruled out cancer. Good news. Great news, really.

But of course, it naturally got me into thinking...what if? You know, I've not had any major medical issue in my life. I broke my wrist once in 5th grade, but that's the only other time outside of being born that I had to spend any extended amount of time in the care of a doctor.

But all of a sudden, I'm thinking that something could happen to me. And really, I guess I never figured anything could. Not that I've always felt "invincible," just that I didn't think I had a target on me.

For those of you just hearing about this little episode for the first time, particularly those who might have expected to hear something about it from me personally rather than an Internet posting...well, I guess it's just not a real comfortable thing to talk about in the first place. In the second, I didn't like that moment of mortality that I felt, and perhaps reliving that brief emotion is just a little more than I wanted to deal with at the time.

For a whole 3 days while we waited for the doctors to give a final assessment, I kept finding myself occasionally distracted by thoughts...what would I do? What could I do? How do I have time to deal with something like this? Thankfully, I'm not in a position to consider such questions now, but the main takeaway for me has been a little bit more compassion for the multitudes of people around me and elsewhere who have found something like this becoming a major part of their life.

Oh, and about the actual problem...well, the doctors didn't figure out exactly what it is, just what it isn't. They ran some (extremely uncomfortable) tests, but in the end they prescribed me some medication and said it would probably not be an issue. So far it has proven to be true. Very happy about that one.

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