"It's Probably Nothing"

On October 15, I turned up for my regular cervix service. When my number is called, I never quite know who's going to be there to greet me. Marcelo, my surgeon? Eilish, the nurse who so famously cried "you beat the bastard" almost two years ago? Or someone else? Today it was a female doctor I'd never seen before but who immediately made me feel at ease.

We went into another room and she asked me to get undressed while she stepped outside. When she returned I was greeted with, "oh wow, you're all ready!" There I was, on my back, legs in the stirrups, sheet draped over my knees with a look on my face of...oh God...have I read this situation terribly wrong? She told me about how when she returns, most women are standing awkwardly in the middle of the room with the sheet wrapped around their lower half. Not me though. The undies had been discarded and the legs were spread. I knew what I was here for.

She then proceeded to give me the first pap smear in almost two years where I didn't bawl my eyes out from the discomfort. And while you'd think I'd be grateful, I actually started wondering if perhaps she wasn't thorough enough. Would she miss something?

Regardless, after the worst of the exam, she poked around what was left of the lymph nodes in my groin. And then she stopped. We both felt it. Her finger passed over a lump. She moved her hand back and forth, flicking over a lump. "It's probably nothing," she said. I'd heard that before.

Tomorrow, almost seven weeks later, I'm going for my MRI to see whether that little lump might be troublesome. Whether it lights up like a Christmas tree on the MRI, or not. It's been a long wait. And while it's nerve-wracking thinking about the 'what ifs' and frustrating thinking about how the hospitals are so overrun that a lump in a cancer-patient takes seven weeks before it gets investigated, I can't help but be focussed on the wise words of good old Dr Walker. It is what it is. And what it is, is probably nothing.