February 13, 2023

what I know, now you know

Hi, it’s me. So listen, I need to tell you something. I’m rewatching The West Wing and there’s a season two episode called 17 People in which the character Toby Ziegler is the 17th person to learn that President Bartlet has Multiple Sclerosis. 

That’s not what I need to tell you, but it’s because I had recently watched this episode that I started counting how many people knew during the week of February 13th what I’m about to tell you: eight people. 

For a brief time last week only eight people had this news, and it was almost like it wasn’t even a thing and we could go on as usual. 

I keep thinking about the space between concept that I wrote about in December and alluded to in October – the space between a thing that happens and finding out a thing happened, how your whole world has suddenly changed but you don’t know it yet. 

Only this time it’s in reverse, and we know about a thing but we don’t yet know what will happen.

So here’s the news: Bryan had a routine colonoscopy a couple weeks ago, and it wasn’t great. They biopsied a gnarly polyp and found it to be cancerous. At this point we don’t know if it’s a Very Big Deal or No Big Whoop. We won’t know until Bryan has surgery to remove the tumor and they get a good look around in there and do some testing.

Yup. We’re doing that now.

As of this writing The Zugs are mostly still in the dark humor phase of acceptance. I mean, for our entire twenty year marriage I’ve joked with Bryan about how I plan to spend his life insurance money when he finally croaks (usually in the context of me wanting to strangle him), so why stop now when the joke has an even bigger payoff??

It’s in this vein that I declare: of all the cancers, this is the best one! It’s treatable, was caught during a routine screening, and no symptoms had presented. No less than three people have told me that someone they know had colon cancer in the last few years and were now cancer free.

If you like, you can read about this from Bryan’s own words on his Substack, which he just started:

Schrödinger’s Polyp

So that’s the news from Lake Wobegon the ZugHaus.

Until next time,

Jen

p.s. I collected all updates related to Bryan’s health in one place HERE.