When I was small people watched soap operas without embarrassment. Whenever the almost-banal bad news that the character had cancer was announced, it was preceded by the doc telling him or her that he had seen 'shadows' on the x-ray. I have no idea if x-rays of the period really showed 'shadows,' or if this was just a piece of TV mystification, or MD mystification. But it worked: it conveyed a ghostly and ominous presence in one's body.
I had some 'shadows,' of some sort on a CT scan of my lungs a few days ago, and tomorrow morning I will have a bronchoscopy to try to determine if one of the two is malignant. (The other may be too small to reach with the instrument.) The doc, and the books I read, tell me the likelihood is very small that the one in my right lung is anything but a more or less insignificant 'broncholith,' while the one in the other lung is also tiny and seems to arise from a scar first observed years ago when I smoked tobacco. But there is such a thing as scar carcinoma....
It's going to be hard to go to sleep tonight. I'd like to think that the procedure, preceded by local anaesthetic and then by midazolam and fentanyl, will not be awful: in fact, I may not feel anything at all. It is the pathology, of course, which troubles me most. A single malignancy which is small and has not invaded even adjacent lymph nodes is not awful: it can be removed with little loss of lung function (but many years of worry afterwards). The real killer (pardon the pun) is if the little shadow above the scar in the other lung is also malignant--and worst if it is the same kind of malignancy which I hope they do not find in my right lung. In that case I think I review my will very quickly and consider how I might spend a foreshortened life.
I never expected any of this of course. I have lived into middle age without any particular illness, which is itself a grace. And now my friends are all sending good words, and my best friend, who is vastly overworked, came to spend an hour or more this evening to divert me from my anxiety.
My brother in Tel Aviv said the 'Mi-sheberakh' prayer for me this past Saturday in synagogue. It invokes G-d who blessed our ancestors and asks him to bless the person in peril. I knew he was going to do so, and I'd like to think I felt the benefit flowing into me.
I will be back with more news when I have it. May the Power who controls the universe give me, and all those whom I love and all who read this message, good health and long and useful life.
Alex
