but had no fucking clue what was in store for us or what it’s like to weather true sickness—we still don’t fully understand, although we certainly understand better than we did that day. I fixated on thoughts of Josh finding comfort in the arms of another woman as he dealt with the stresses of an ailing wife, à la John Edwards. I don’t think that Josh would cheat on me at this stage, but you never know what grief will do to a man.
Let me pause here to address the issue of Josh and another woman. He and I have talked candidly about Josh remarrying if I don’t make it. I affectionately call the hypothetical woman the Slutty Second Wife. I understand that if I die, Josh will need companionship and my girls will need a mother figure, and I’m okay with that. But I will state here for the record and to get this off my chest, any woman who encroaches on our relationship while I am still living will have to answer to me. And to her and the Slutty Second Wife (if she is not the same person), I promise this—if you screw with Josh and my children, either while I’m still alive or after I’m gone, if you find a way to get around my ironclad estate planning and take assets from my children into your grubby little hands, if you otherwise harm any of them, I will haunt you from the afterlife and I will hurt you.
Where were we? Oh, it was a rough week waiting for the next CEA test. When the day came, I had blood drawn at 11:30. The nurse-practitioner emailed me the results at 3:30: “Did you hear the good news? Your CEA is 1.8. It’s normal!” I couldn’t believe it. Normal? Is it possible to have such a dramatic drop in one week? Possible yet improbable, I suspected. I went back in to see the doctor that day. He said he was suspicious of the results and was having that blood sample retested. And since I was already there, I should have more blood drawn for yet another CEA reading. So I had blood drawn again at 4:30. The CEA on the retest came back at 17.8—how can a lab screw up so bad? The CEA on the second blood sample came back at 16.5. I told the doctor, yeah, great it’s lower, but how can there be such a discrepancy in the CEA of the same person within five hours? He had no satisfying response—just the unreliability of CEA, and we shouldn’t hang our hats on it.
Because the CEA was still elevated, I went ahead and scheduled the PET scan, right after a trip to D.C. for a colon cancer event. I had to wait through the weekend to hear the results. At least there was much distraction, with Josh’s parents visiting and Mia’s birthday party on Saturday. Yes, life marches on, cancer or not.
Two spots lit up on the PET scan, one to the left of the spine by the psoas muscle and one in the right pelvis. Dr. A.C. thought the spot by the psoas muscle was probably nothing. To gain further clarity, he wanted me to have an MRI of the abdomen and pelvis. Josh and I asked a series of questions: Would the surgeon have seen these spots during the surgery? Not necessarily. Would the CT scan performed right after the surgery have picked these spots up? No. Is this scan bad? No. Is she going to be okay, and I mean…I know what you mean. Yes, I think she can be cured.
I admire Josh for having the courage to ask that last question, and I admire the doctor for making such a statement. Nice to hear, but it honestly doesn’t mean much to me. It’s not that I don’t have the courage to ask about being cured, but rather I think whatever the answer, it is irrelevant. Cancer is a dynamic disease. Doctors are not omniscient. An answer one day will not necessarily be the same the next day.
But all the same, I was feeling good and optimistic. The psoas muscle spot was probably nothing, and the thing in the right pelvis, if cancer, likely represented only one cancerous lymph node, but the MRI would tell us more.
For some reason, the secretary scheduled my MRI with Josh. He was anxious that I get it done right away. The only available spot was