There Is No "i" In Denial!

A Not Great Shrödinger’s Polyp Update: The Pathology Report.

Welcome new subscribers! To catch you up to speed, I’m on hiatus from my weekly Wednesday newsletter while my husband Bryan recovers from colon surgery. Instead, I’m posting these periodic updates regarding his colon cancer and surgery to remove the cancerous polyp. You can read the backstory HERE. Weekly Wednesday newsletters about Things Other Than Cancer return in May.

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Hi, it’s me. I’m off work this week while Bryan is recovering from surgery, so we’ve been enjoying morning movies, twice a day walks, and visits from friends. He’s feeling less pain when he moves, but the incision areas are still tender, and he still can’t lift, push, or pull anything heavier than a gallon of milk. 

Proof of life, Tuesday, April 18, 2023.

So, I’m going to just cut to the chase:

The pathology report came back and revealed more cancer in Bryan’s lymph nodes. I go into more detail about the pathology report if you want to skip to the update at the end. We knew there’d be a slight chance of this outcome — hence our calling it Schrödinger’s Polyp — but still.

Many thanks to our local friends who have dropped off dinners or sent Door Dash/Uber Eats/Grub Hub – it’s been nice to have one less thing to think about. 

Related, hit me up in the comments with your healthy and unhealthy coping strategies for stress, anxiety, and grief — especially if you’ve been a caregiver.¹

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There Is No “i” In Denial!

On March 13 we had our first meeting with an oncologist at The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center – or Fred Hutch for short. It was one month to the day after Bryan’s initial diagnosis after finding Schrödingr’s Polyp during a routine colonoscopy.

We parked in the underground garage and took the elevator to the main floor lobby where we waited at a different bank of elevators to take us to our first appointment at the resource center on the third floor. 

The wait was long and a crowd started forming. It seemed like only one elevator was running – due to maintenance or remodeling or something. My observational antenna was up and I noticed no one was talking, not even people who were obviously together. I only heard the ding of the elevator, the occasional shuffling of feet, and announcements over the intercom. It was a subdued crowd, even for Seattle. 

At the third floor admin office we waited along with another man for our turn to check in.

“Where are you from?” he asked. He was tall and wearing a beanie.

I was confused by the question at first. Does he mean which neighborhood?

“From here in Seattle,” Bryan says.

“Oh it must be nice to be so close!” the man says. “I’m in town from Idaho.”

Right, I nod as I reorient myself to this alternate universe invading our own. We’re at a leading cancer care center for this part of the United States. 

The man then asked if we’ve had treatment yet or if we’re just getting started. I regard him again, noticing how baggy his soft sweatpants and sweatshirt hang on his thin frame. His face is pale. I don’t see any wisps of hair peeking out from his beanie.

In contrast, Bryan was wearing street clothes and a full head of thick, foxy silver hair. His face was pink and glowing. He responded that we’re just getting started. 

It slowly dawned on me that we were surrounded by Cancer People. 

I recalled the silence in a crowded lobby, the disproportionate number of people wearing pajama-like clothing, the worry lines hovering above face masks. No one was there for a hip replacement or a broken arm. No one was there to celebrate a new baby or to roast their buddy about falling off a ladder. 

This was a cancer care center. We’re all here because of cancer. There was no laughing, no celebration balloons, no relative certainty of what the next six months might look like.

Danielle Ponder’s cover² of a Radiohead song shuffled into my brain:

Lord… What am I doin' here?

What am I doin’ here?

I don't belong here

For our entire onboarding experience at Fred Hutch that week, I was in deep denial about what the hell we were doin’ here. I saw it as an unfortunate glitch in our Spring travel plans. Oh darn! We’ll have to push our trip to New York out a month!

It’s a beautiful day to be outside! What cancer?!

While waiting for Bryan to get an MRI, I kept my nose in a book and avoided eye contact with other folks in the waiting room. I didn’t want to meet anyone or swap chemo stories or hear where they’d come in from. After all, Bryan only has a little bit of cancer, and the surgery will remove it, and we’ll look back on this merely as that time we made a lot of jokes about butts. 

Lord… What am I doin' here?

I don't belong here

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A brief tangent about my mother.

My mom would have loved this. Not the being sick part, but the part about having a captive audience of strangers to become friends with through the joy of small talk. I imagined her accompanying Gordy³ to his chemo appointments, extrovertedly chatting up the medical staff and other patients with all kinds of distracting subjects, like where did they go to college or how did they like their trip to Sweden or my daughter lives in Seattle where the constant drizzle makes my curls go flat. 

I can picture it clearly because she was present for Ruthie’s birth, our oldest. She paced in and out of my hospital room while I was in active labor, carrying on conversations with the nurses who came in to check on me. I adored my mom and mostly didn’t mind the chatter, but I mentioned that maybe she could shut the hell up about how much it snowed in Minnesota last night as I was breathing through a contraction and trying to ignore the fact that I was pooping a little in the process.⁴

Mom wasn’t a busy-body or a gossip – she genuinely loved people and was interested in knowing more about them. She was excellent at chatting about the small things, whereas I am awkward with small talk and have to resist going directly to questions like, Hi, I’m Jen. What’s your name? Have you experienced crushing job loss disappointment and/or are you currently processing any childhood trauma through the miracle of talk therapy?

So now on top of everything else I’m feeling, I wish my mom was still around. As the wife of someone who experienced cancer, she’d know what I’m going through. I would call her up and tell her about the lady from Montana whose partner (wife? sister? friend?) was getting radiation therapy at the same time Bryan was getting an MRI, and how she asked a kid with the bluntness of someone not from Seattle, “WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOUR ANKLE?” 

(It was cancer, of course. We’re all here for cancer, lady, remember?)

My mom would have laughed and said something like, What a hoot! Or maybe she would have flown out from Minnesota to sit with me during these appointments, distracting and entertaining me by engaging in all the What are you in here for? conversations on my behalf, because even though I silently mock waiting room small talk, I secretly enjoy eavesdropping on it. I really do want to know what’s wrong with that kid’s ankle, but if I participate in the conversation in any way, the questions will escalate pretty quickly to how are you handling friendship abandonment during this, your darkest hour? 

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Back to being (or not being) in denial. 

The week before Bryan’s surgery we had an “education” meeting about all things related to having surgery. They gave us a handy checklist of when to start bowel prep, when to start taking antibiotics, how many Ensure Surgery drinks to ingest each day, and how to wash with the special soap on the morning of surgery.

Then they sent us home with everything – the check lists, the Ensure, and the special soap – in a distinctive dark green plastic bag with handles. 

In the elevator there was another couple in their 50s wearing street clothes and looking great – just like us! Bryan held up his green bag and said something like, hey I’ve got one too! and I’m like, what the hell, man, avoid eye contact! 

The guy looked at the green bag in his own hand and – I could be projecting here – but it was like he hadn’t quite realized he’d just been recruited to the most undesirable secret society in the Pacific Northwest and our secret handshake was the exchange of plastic green bags. 

He didn’t respond coherently to Bryan before shuffling off the elevator. I get it though. He was probably thinking…

Lord… What am I doin' here?

I don't belong here

By the way, I know there’s an “i” in denial. It just took me a month to admit it.

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Update: The Pathology Report

The good news is the margins are clear. This means the surgeons are confident they removed the entire tumor when they removed a portion of Bryan’s colon.

The bad news is, they found cancer cells in two of the nineteen lymph nodes they removed from the area. This presents a higher risk that cancer might be circulating through Bryan’s body via his blood supply.

The surgeon is kicking us back over to the oncologist for a recommendation on further treatment — likely chemotherapy as a sort of “clean up duty” to clear any residual cells from his body.

The official diagnosis was changed from Stage 1 colorectal cancer to Stage 3. 

Obviously it’s not the news we wanted, and dark humor denial stories aside, I think it was a surprise to everyone involved based on all signs leading up to this point.

That’s all we know for now until we meet again with the oncologist. Sorry to bring you this bummer news, but at least we get to still make jokes about butts.

Until next time,

Jen

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News & Notes 🌼

Last summer (2022) we went to an outdoor event called Timber! Outdoor Music Festival. It was a Friday night, the weather was perfect, and Deep Sea Diver was the headliner. I’ve been thinking about this song from their set, how they repeated the refrain over and over and over again on that perfect summer night —

Don’t be afraid

Don’t be ashamed

— the evening air was cool after a hot day, the stage was surrounded by tall pines, and the sky was a little darker outside of the city. I was standing, my bare feet on a picnic blanket, grooving with my eyes close, feeling hypnotized… don’t be afraid… don’t be ashamed… don’t be afraid… don’t be ashamed…

They riffed on this refrain forever — a diversion from the recorded version, which is one of my favorite things about seeing live shows.

I’ve been humming these lines to remind me… don’t be afraid.

1. If your suggestion is to enjoy a little Granddaddy Purple before bed… ✅ already handled. 😂

2. I love love love Danielle Ponder’s emotional version of Creep and all the subtle lyric changes she made. When I sing along I feel like I’m yelling at God.

3. I wrote about who Gordy is and how he died in this post, which is also about my mom dying in the middle of a bathroom renovation (mine, not hers):

My Mom Died Last Year

4. Actually, I asked my friend Alecia to tell my mom to shut the hell up while I was having contractions, and Alecia diplomatically suggested to my mom that perhaps she could carry on that conversation in the hall.