Thursday: Conclusion

After leaving them to clean up the carnage in the ultrasound suite, Dean and I went back upstairs to the surgeon's room. He said he would get the result from the samples in pathology, and come straight to his office to tell us.

Just after 5pm on that same Thursday, the day which had started a year ago with a normal ward round, the surgeon sat in front of us with a serious face. A "bad news" face.

As he spoke to us, I had a dissociative moment. My brain heard him say the expected words: it's a blocked duct.

And yet at the same time his mouth seemed to be saying a word that started with C and ended with -ancer. Impossible.

I shook my head and asked him to repeat what he had just said. With no change of expression, as if my request were completely reasonable and expected he repeated his sentence and this time both brain and eyes agreed: it's cancer.

He continued to talk to us for a further half hour. I presume he was outlining  the need for staging scans, possible treatment plans, likely scenarios for prognosis. I did not hear any of it. My mind was too busy buzzing with various disconnected thoughts:

He must have picked up someone else's file.

I'm too young to have cancer! 

I don't feel sick. This can't be true.

This is impossible. I'm a doctor, not a patient.

This can't be happening, I just want to go home and forget this ever happened.

We have to move house in three weeks!

Will I have to wean Benji? She's still feeding eight times each day!

Was it something I ate? Was it something I did?

Is this my fault somehow?

Will this also attack my daughters, sister, cousins, niece?

How long will I be off work? How much sick leave do I have?

How can I tell my parents, currently in Europe?

How can I tell anyone?

I've never smoked. I'm a good person! I don't deserve this!

I need to go home and pretend that my life has not just changed completely.

I presume Dean shook the surgeon's hand, thanked him, said all the right things. I didn't say anything.

I don't remember what I did that night.

I don't remember what I did the next day.

I don't remember what I did for the whole weekend.

I'm pretty sure I took the girls to the park and tried not to think about it.

I'm sure I thought about it anyway.

The only clear picture in my mind is pushing Zoe on the swings, as she shrieked and laughed, and wondering how long it would be before I could do this again, if ever.