Today was my surgical consult in advance of needing to biopsy a lymph node because the CT scan earlier this year for my bladder stones and diverticulum showed enlarged lymph nodes. Mostly, either it will be lymph nodes in the vicinity of my bladder having been activated because of the inflammation, et cetera, in and around the diverticulum, or it will cancer. It feels like my doctors lean toward the former, but, obviously, we don’t go by leanings we go by evidence.
Any of these important appointments require me to haul my actually-autistic brain through ninety minutes of public transit clear across the metropolitan Portland area, through the waiting room, through the appointment, and then through ninety minutes to get back home. This was especially challenging today, as I still felt the reverberations of the fatigue hammer that came down on me during my trip to the zoo yesterday.
Due credit to today’s nurse and doctor, neither of whom had I met before, for navigating the scattered and anxious self that I am when required to be in a stuffy, claustrophobic room being socially-performative. Bonus points to the doctor, who was big on metaphor, up to and including describing the potential cancer cells as like the runners in Logan’s Run who refuse to die at thirty like they are supposed to do.
The big psychic obstacle for me right now is that surgery likely would happen in October, and I already expect the usual birthday depression, all the more because this year I turn fifty, and I don’t need to be carrying the psychic weight of surgery at the same time, especially given the drain tube I’ll have hanging out of my body for anywhere from two days to two weeks afterward.