What Did I Do To Deserve This?

Karma's just sharpening her fingernails and finishing her drink. She says she'll be with you shortly. - Unknown

Within three months, I was diagnosed with lung cancer, told I needed a breast biopsy, there was a suspicious nodule on my thyroid that should be biopsied and a tumor in the right parietal of my brain. Thankfully, this wasn’t all on the same day. Otherwise, the stress of all this news would have been too much to bear. When I get bad news, it takes me a few days to process and decide how to move on. I admit there were a couple of instances of “Just shoot yourself now.” However, I am anti-gun. Hmm, I suppose an arrow would work, but someone would have to assist. There’s no way I could shoot an arrow and run fast enough to get in front of it. So offing myself was out of the question.

Why me? Karma is the theory of cause and effect. If you believe in that, what happens to you happens because you caused it with your actions. There have been times in my life when I wasn’t very nice to someone and had unkind thoughts. However, I don’t think I’ve ever been overwhelmingly nasty like some of the Karens out there. And I can think of a lot of famous folks that deserve a hard dose of bad karma, but nothing bad seems to happen to them. Karma does go both ways. Perhaps my good actions took care of me to a point before the bad kicked in? Best to not dwell too much about it. It is what it is. 

First thing was the breast biopsy. It wasn’t for sure that cancer was hanging out there. There was no actual lump, but a suspicious area that “might” be cancer. The procedure was scheduled. The day of I first stopped at a women’s health center across the street from the hospital. The nurse practitioner explained the procedure. I told her I was currently dealing with another health issue. Lung cancer. Her eyes widened. She told me the results of the breast biopsy would take a couple of days and she would notify me as soon as she got the report.

At the hospital, I was directed into a room with what I guess you would call a surgical chair. Above it is a machine that I couldn’t figure out what it does. I would soon find out. The nurse told me to remove my shirt and bra. She handed me a pink paper jacket to put on. Do I get to keep this? I put it on with the opening in front. She told me it goes in the back. Hunh? When I turned it around I noticed pockets over each side. No, not pockets. They were flaps. Then a couple more nurses came in and a doctor. There were a few minutes of them all looking at the mammogram. Jeez, somebody didn’t do their homework beforehand? Then they removed the flap over my right boob. I don’t think I want to keep this jacket now. The doctor gave me a local anesthetic in my right breast. Then there was a few minutes of maneuvering the machine above me. This was the device that would be going in to collect cells. It does this using the longest needle I had ever seen. I doubted that local anesthetic was going to help with the pain. I was right. At one point, I was sure the needle had passed through my boob and knocked into my belly. If it was doing liposuction, bonus! The needle was extracted. I dressed and went home to wait for results—without the jacket. 

When the nurse practitioner called later that day, my heart stopped. She said it could take a couple of days, so this couldn’t be good news. “I wanted to call you right away. It’s benign! With your lung cancer diagnosis, I didn’t want to wait to give you some good news.” Bless her! Whew! I thanked her profusely. She wished me luck. I hung up the phone and cried. Maybe this was karma rewarding me for my past good actions.