The last straw, unless it's not

This time last year, I was on my way out of the cancer doctor's office for the last time, having had my lump officially certified to be nothing. I was never really worried about it, having no history of breast cancer in my family and a surgeon who was both absolutely sure it was an always-benign kind of tumor and obligated to take it out once the radiologist worded her report in a certain way. So, it came out, and I got my souvenir scar, some Percocet that did not a blasted thing for me, and my first and I assumed last brush with serious medicine for a long, long time.

Yeah, well.

This time this year, I assume nothing. And though there has been plenty of medicine, little of it has been serious. Potentially serious, maybe. Could have been, might have been, let's just be sure, if the results had been different, you just never know, just in case let's call 911 but in the end it's nothing, or at least nothing that a little medication can't handle, or if not that medication maybe this one, kinds of things, though we all did quite fervently thank baby Jesus that I didn't lose consciousness when I had that seizure while I was driving the car alone.

But now, five months since I started wandering through this medical maze, I must go Saturday to see if I'm headed to the operating room for the second July in a row, and I have to say I can barely stand the thought of it. It won't necessarily be bad news, and, as they say, better out than in, but, I just don't wanna. I have been the patient, been the patient, been the patient, and mostly, been a patient patient. I have given the blood, peed in the cups, been x-rayed and scanned and palpated again and again and again. I have had sticky electrodes put in my hair and fire-y sticks poked in unmentionable places. I have taken the pills that make me sick and the pills that take my appetite away and the pills that give me instant bronchitis and, for the love of God, the pills that prevent me from enjoying a beer. And still, when I go to yet another -ologist for one thing that turns out fine, an excruciating test for nothing, what do I get but an "oh, by the way, you better call your other -ologist for this 3.5 cm thing that is growing where it ought not to be."

And while, in the end, that might turn out to be my lucky break, a miracle that someone noticed it before it really needed noticing, the reason that everything is happening for, right now, I'm tired. Of all of it. And I really just wish it'd go away.