Some mechanism has been at work in my body for the past month, some sort of filter that has somehow warded off the crippling panic that typically overcomes me during health scares. It's the panic that allows me to turn a simple cough into a symptom of lung cancer, a stomach pain into a sign of ovarian cancer. It's the curse of surviving cancer, I guess -- the continual worry that the disease is coming back, that it is going to strike someone dear to me.Yet cancer never entered my mind when my husband and I began noticing our three-year-old Danny's strange eye movements, the strikingly odd manner in which one eye rolls upward when he gazes toward the ceiling -- this is normal -- while the other only crosses -- this is not normal. Surprisingly, I was not overly worried about this and was sure it was something that with glasses or eye exercises could be fixed. Never did I fear cancer.
We started with our pediatrician who quickly knew this issue was out of his league. I was calm. He moved us on to a pediatric eye specialist who was stumped by these eye movements that are typically congenital and occur much earlier in life. If not congenital, it must be something acquired, this doctor told us. He looked around a bit at Danny's eyes, dilated his pupils, and tested his vision. He determined his eyesight is perfect. And his gaze is a complete mystery. He ordered an MRI.
Still I was okay -- until my husband shared one evening with me that he was worried about a tumor. Why I hadn't yet obsessed about this is its own mystery, for which I am thankful. It allowed me to function for a short time independent of fear and anxiety and only a short time ago did I let panic seep into my consciousness.
When I scheduled the MRI for Danny and was told it was an urgent case that must be scheduled quickly, my stomach sank. When the doctor who would read the MRI met with us this morning to talk about this diagnostic procedure, he shared that a mass is what they would be looking for. I'm not sure how for all these weeks I missed this opportunity to get all worked up. But I did. And I got to act like a normal worried mother, not an over-the-top this must be cancer obsessed mother. It felt good.
And it felt good when the doctor read the MRI right in front of us this morning, sharing that there is no mass. He was not able to share what is causing this mystery eye condition that still must be investigated, but he assured us it's nothing serious, nothing life-threatening, nothing like cancer.
Perhaps the fact that my handful of recent health scares have not resulted in malignancies is allowing me to cool my guns a bit, to relax, to realize that not everything comes with a worst-case-scenario result. So maybe -- just maybe -- I am approaching some normalcy in my life, two years after my own worst-case-scenario sent me on the most terrifying ride of my life.
I was present for death only one time in my 36 years of life. I consider this both a bad and a good thing. It's bad because I did not want my grandmother to die -- and watching it happen made it so real, so vivid, so painful. I don't think I would have ever chosen to watch my grandma die -- to watch her slip from consciousness to coma, to observe her altered body once death arrived, to witness the movement of her body on a stretcher as it was wheeled out of the house from the bedroom I still see every time I visit my mom's house. But I think I am lucky really -- and this is the good part -- because I got to be with her during her final moments. I got to watch her body as it lay still, peaceful and calm and still breathing. I got to talk to her and although she could not respond, I believe she could hear my words. And it makes me happy to know my grandma may have known I was with just prior to her flight to heaven. And after her flight, I got to touch her cool hands. I got to feel the power of the passing of one life -- a long life -- and I got to feel the comfort of a death that was not ugly or painful or difficult. It was sad -- it's still sad -- that my grandma died three years ago. But what a privilege it was to be part of the day she left this world.
