As May has rolled around this year, I find myself having, and anticipating, a lot of anniversaries. I wonder if other cancer patients/survivors do this too.
By: Robin Harry
In any case, this post is going to be sort of a flashback episode, since I don’t think I’ve told these stories here. And I might as well name the occasions…
Anniversary #1 (The Advil Anniversary). Last Saturday would have been my choir’s annual concert. A year ago that day, I woke up in the morning with some chest pain and a little difficulty breathing. I remember chatting online with my choir director about it; she wondered if I was anxious (a trio of us were doing this song), I wondered if it was an exercise injury. Whatever it was went away with Advil, and I sang my heart out to God that Saturday night. The morning of that concert was the first time I remember feeling the chest pain that would ultimately lead to all of this.
Anniversary #2 (the Pain Anniversary): This Friday, a year ago today, was the beginning of the grand weekend of pain, the chest pain that I stubbornly ignored for three days. I went to a choir rehearsal that evening, and when I got there I was perfectly fine. As the rehearsal went on, I started feeling the chest pain again, and by the end of rehearsal I could barely breathe. The pain was severe; it started in the middle of my chest, radiated up my neck all the way to my chin (I kid not, my chin was throbbing), over to my right shoulder. I remember leaving the rehearsal and going to lean against a wall outside the room, trying to calm myself so that the pain would subside and so that I could breathe. I remember one of my friends finding me crying in one of the storage rooms while we were putting things away after rehearsal. I again took Advil that night (and went out for Thai food after rehearsal), sang with the choir the next day at a retirement home with a chest tighter than a Kardashian bandage dress, and stayed home all day Sunday before I finally went to the doctor on Monday. Which brings me to…
Anniversary #3 (the Pericarditis Anniversary): This coming Monday will be a year since I was diagnosed with acute pericarditis at my doctor’s office. When I went to that appointment in excruciating pain, the (really handsome) resident doctor I saw ordered an ECG to check my heart, and a chest X-ray to rule out a pulmonary embolism. The ECG showed that I had pericarditis, and the x-ray would be reviewed about a week later…
Hindsight truly is 20/20. I look back on all these events, and while I don’t regret anything, I realize how much of an education I’ve gotten. I think about the song that I sang with my friends, and I realize how differently I would sing it now given the chance. While three days likely wouldn’t have made a difference really in the outcome, I probably would have been diagnosed more quickly had I gone to the freakin’ emergency room (seriously, besides avoiding ER wait times, what on earth was I thinking??). So I choose to make these “anniversaries” times of reflection, of appreciating the journey that began just about a year ago.
