Dr. Wilfong called with the unremarkable Ct Scan results. It must be a glorious type of call to make. I know that some people receive the opposite, and I feel so much compassion for that, for the deliverer and receivers of such news.
My situation is the ideal. From “the scientific standpoint”, the Ideal has occurred. The surgery removed the main mass. It was an unplanned surgery, emergent. It was not supposed to happen. But because the chemotherapy worked so well, the mass pulled at the surface of the colon and perforated it. Dr. Haque removed the mass, some of the lymph system, and a few other “unnecessary” components of my body to boot. I could have died. But I did not.
And the chemotherapy also worked in the liver. Three rounds. I had barely received the third dose, and had it coursing through my veins as the surgery team pulled the parts out of my abdomen.
In the liver, there were two spots, two marbles of cancer. The CT Scan shows that they are not there, not visible. “Highly reactive to the chemotherapy.”
The chemotherapy could have killed me. I could have died. I did not.
The report from the radiology department lists the components of the torso. And next to each part, the word “unremarkable”. Lungs, unremarkable. Liver, unremarkable. Colon, unremarkable. Never has it been so pleasing to be unremarkable.
The feeling is shock. Like a mind trying to grasp that the terrain entirely changed with the shift of a chicain. Logic spins and weaves, working to comprehend, working to create a new story. Footing lost, ground shifting. Falling like Alice through the hole. A different dimension, a new world with alternative colors, a new watch. A new pocket watch hanging from a shiny chain and ticking a different rhythm.
I could have died, but I did not.
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