When my mother-in-law went to the hospital last week, she was feeling poorly. Her husband, my father-in-law, had to work to persuade her to go. After all she was just cold. Really, really cold. Still, that's not feeling badly enough for the hospital, surely. Of course, she was worse than she thought. The high fever and elevated white count proved that. Along with excreting a variety of bodily fluids for testing she was asked to have an x-ray. The x-ray revealed a mass in one lung.
It took a couple of days and several casual conversations between my husband and the hospital staff and my husband and his dad, for information to trickle down to me. I often choose not be at the front line when things happen to my husband's family. It's just better that way. As I contemplated each of the bits of information (my in-laws aren't particularly medically savvy) I imagined that she had pneumonia driven in large part to her recent traumatic move, lack of activity, low weight, and poor diet, all things I had recently observed. She was also pretty depressed because of the Alzheimer's diagnosis last November.
Throughout this I was chugging along as normal but when the bit about the mass in her lung arrived I came to a shuddering halt. Turns out my husband was even shown the x-ray by a doctor. The mass was big, fist-sized big. The expectation was this was cancer. A biopsy was scheduled.
The biopsy was done a few days ago, the patient is home, mostly comfortable again. Results are scheduled to be revealed in several days. My husband will join his parents at the doctor's office. My mother-in-law seems not to remember that cancer was discussed and is therefore not particularly worried about anything. My father-in-law, who dissolved into a puddle when his wife was diagnosed with Alzheimer's doesn't seem bothered with any concerns about this at all. My husband is oppressed on every side with concerns bigger than he can cope with. This isn't even registering. I am the only one slowly coming unglued.
I wish I could say it was because I love this woman more than life itself and it is my expectation of impending grief that assails me. Or fear for the consequences of lung cancer in her last days, all that straining to breath and illness. Lung cancer can be nasty. Unfortunately that isn't it. The reality on that score is I am not very close to her. She is distant, formal, uninvolved. She's always been that way. My husband and his sister often refer to their frozen mother.
Then why is it that despite my recent addition of an anti-depressant am I anxious, distracted, hungry(!) and verging on a paralyzing panic? I had a very weird sensation yesterday: a constriction in my chest, almost an ache, what felt like fluttering in my heart. My husband assured me it sounded exactly like an esophageal spasm or reflux, something he knows a lot about. I took a Tums and it went away. I've never experienced anything like that before. Another stress-related symptom, I can't believe it!
It isn't lost on me that everything, it seems, is about me. Self-involvement is my main occupation. However, I was totally taken aback by my reaction. Cancer. Does it really have this kind of hold on me? Apparently. I don't want to experience those spasms again, remembering the many, many times my husband was laid out with real, frightening, am-I-having-a-heart-attack, pain. The solution is the same thing I used to tell him: learn to relax. I don't seem to know as much about it as I thought I did. Good thing it's spring because the chances of getting outside for a good hearty walk is much more likely. In the desperation of finding a solution to jump on that's the easiest.
Here's to pushing forward.
