Cancer Sucks

Acting "As if" means choosing a reaction that seems beneficial and then acting as if that's the way you actually feel. For today's essay, write about a time when you did that. How did it work out?
===================================================
Acting 'As if."

We cancer survivors experience acting "As if" all the time. Here's the first time I acted "As if."

The day I got my cancer diagnosis was Sept. 5th, 2006. It was morning. I'd just finished my night shift in the ER, and I'd strolled into the radiology suite to convince the radiologists to slip me into the CT scanner schedule because, two days previously, on the Sunday of the Labor Day weekend, one of the other docs on the medical staff had heard me cough and had gently suggested (all right, not so gently) that I should get a CT scan because my cough sounded to her like the cough you get from lung cancer.

The radiologists re-assured me that as a non-smoker, I had a very low chance at having lung cancer. I pointed out to them that in my part time job as a hospice doc, I'd cared for a few non-smokers who died of lung cancer. So, to placate me, they asked the technician to slip me into the CT schedule.

After the CT, I went into the office of the radiologist who was reading CTs that morning to get my result. He and I were looking at the various views, and I noticed that he wasn't saying anything for a longer time than it would normally take a radiologist to read a negative chest CT. So, I looked more closely, and then I saw something I didn't think was normal. I pointed it out to hem and asked, "Is that what you're looking at?"

"Yes."

"Could it be something else besides cancer?"

"Probably not."

This is where the acting "As if" kicked in. What I wanted to do was yell, "Oh shit."

But I restrained myself and pretended to be calm and rational because that's the way doctors are supposed to be, right? Right.

Well, that worked. Everyone thought I was being calm and rational because I never said, "Oh shit" until, well, just now. Meanwhile, in my head, I was visualizing the hospice patients with lung cancer that I'd been caring for during the previous twenty years.

Getting cancer really is the pits. It changes your whole life around. Some people like to say that finding out you have cancer has a few good points since you re-orient your priorities and re-direct your life toward things that are really important.

Well, that's true, but it's not worth it. Anything good that comes from having cancer is completely outweighed by the bad stuff, the surgery, chemo, sickness, death.

Cancer sucks. There, I said it, and I'm glad.