The doctor sent me home with a picture of my tumor. It reminded me of the hamster for the Quizno’s commercials from the early 2000’s. But it didn’t feel like giving my enemy a face so I could focus my rage…it felt like only a silly dork like me could have such a silly looking dork tumor. So I spend sometime with that strange feeling. I didn’t expect for the cancer to feel like an indictment of my personality.
Every couple of days I woke up in the middle of the night with a start, sweating and scared. I would think – I can’t believe I’m pretending to have cancer to get attention! That’s crazy! And I can’t believe all these doctors are going along with it! Am I an amazing actor? Then I would remember that it was all true and that it was the Australian woman in Apple Cider Vinegar who made it up for attention. I was the person who pretended to have horrible hemorrhoids to talk myself out of going to the doctor.
I apologized to everyone I told. That doesn’t actually seem weird, but I know other people think it’s weird. The reality is a diagnosis like this changes a lot of the lives of the people around me. I’m not the only person who felt like everything they thought they knew about adulthood got turned upside-down. And Tom, and Onyx, my parents, and my in laws, and my best friends all have their own journey to take on now.