By The Way, I Love You

The year is 2007, I’m 48 years old. I feel a bit panicked—it comes and goes. I am beginning to recognize that in only two years, I’m going to be 50. My mom died at 50—ovarian cancer—and it keeps crossing my mind periodically. I have this weird feeling that something’s going to happen to me at 50. It is scaring me a little, this feeling every time I think about it. It’s a gut feeling deep inside. In 2009 I celebrated my 50th birthday and sure enough, there it was, that health scare that I had anticipated two years earlier. I had a premonition and now it was showing itself to me.

Through a sequence of events one day, I end up in an ambulance. I follow up with my family doctor. Before I know it I’m booked for a biopsy. I am dealing with a lung cancer, or so the doctors have told me. For four months I thought I may be dying, four incredible months.

Here’s what happened: In the middle of an ordinary work-week I woke up during the night with a pain in my left eye. It hurt enough to wake me up. I remember stumbling into the bathroom half asleep, to see if I could find what was causing such discomfort. Whatever it was, it was painful. I didn’t have any luck so I went back to bed. My eye was stinging but I managed to fall back to sleep. The next morning the pain was nearly gone.

I got ready for work as usual, went downstairs to my home office and decided to email my friend Bonnie. I couldn’t stop thinking about the eye pain from the night before. In my email I mentioned that I had experienced this pain in my left eye.

Bonnie’s reply was, “You should check it out; it sounds like a symptom of a stroke.” I laughed—Bonnie was always too dramatic.

But I called my optometrist. I was due for my annual eye exam anyway. She couldn’t fit me in for a few days, and then I mentioned my eye pain. She, funnily enough, said the same thing as Bonnie, “You should get it checked out; it sounds like a symptom of a stroke.” I assured her I would and hung up the phone.

I looked at Bailey, my daughter-in-law, who had worked by my side for the past two years. I told her about the mystery pain and said that when Hector got home from his appointments I would have him take me to the hospital to get everything checked out. I got back to work. Only a few minutes later I decided that I would go to the hospital on my own, I should probably leave now. I was going with my gut feeling. I needed to go the hospital now. I let Bailey know that I wouldn’t be long and to let Hector know where I was when he arrived back at the office.

I got in my car and started to head to town. I didn’t get very far, just up the road a little. All of a sudden I felt a heaviness in my chest. I couldn’t breathe. I pulled over to the side of the road. I got out of my car and yelled to a repair man who was working on a Bell Telephone box just a few feet away. “Do you have a cell phone?” Then I managed to scream, “Call 911.”

I got back in my car, and left the driver’s door open. I put my head between my legs and began to work on calming down. My heart was pounding and I couldn’t get a breath. I could feel my pulse in my throat.

Hector was on his way back to our home and saw my car on the side of the road. He pulled over and stopped. Then Hector grabbed my arm and pulled me up onto my feet. He was laughing in front of the repair man saying, “Come on what’s going on, just breathe.” He started hitting me on the back. Still laughing, he said, “You’re fine, you’re fine, calm down.” The ambulance came and took me to the hospital. Hector followed in his car.

It wasn’t long before I was hooked up to monitors. Then nurses came for blood work and I was wheeled down to the X-ray department for pictures of my chest.

I lay in the emergency room bed, feeling much calmer and relaxed. Hector sat beside my bed reading a book. He didn’t speak to me except to tell me he was annoyed because I wasn’t in my office working and that he needed to get home for his lunch and afternoon appointments.

I didn’t say a word.

The emergency department physician came with the blood results and my chest X-ray. My blood was good. But when looking at the chest X-ray he mentioned something about pneumonia. He said it looked like I had pneumonia and that I should do a follow up X-ray in two weeks. I was discharged and went back to work. I threw away the requisition for the two-week follow-up X-ray, how ridiculous, pneumonia, when I didn’t even have a cough.

The following evening my family doctor called to ask me some questions. He assured me that all was fine and that I had indeed not suffered any kind of stroke. But he wanted to see me in person so I made an appointment for the following week.

A few days later the doctor sat me down in his office and said, “Well Ama, it doesn’t look good; there’s something on your lungs that is showing on your chest X-ray. There are some nodules that look like cancer. I have already booked you to see the best lung specialist in Canada,” he said. “And he has already booked you for a lung biopsy.”