Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Clean


Victoria got the call today. 

She called to tell me about it: 

The pathology report is back from last week's surgery. The tissue they cut from the breast had completely clean margins. And the 5 sentinel lymph nodes that the surgeon removed are completely clean. No cancer in the lymph nodes means no cancer got out into the rest of her body, and the cancer that was in her breast is cleanly and completely cut out. 

Vicky is clean.

That was an amazing moment, standing there in an empty conference room, phone to my ear, listening to Vicky tell me this. I couldn't speak for a long time, almost floated away. It was a moment I will never forget, standing there, listening to the electric silence between us, sharing an incredible, sacred realization that she and I had just crossed a threshold; the uncertainty and fear were now in the past; the road ahead is sunny and verdant and it is going to go on for many, many years.

When I got home, we walked into each other's arms, held each other for a long time. "This lady feels good," I said. "This lady feels healthy."

Then I asked her: "So -- what are we going to do for the rest of our lives?"

She looked up at me with a thousand hopes and said, "I don't know. I guess we'll just need to figure that out, won't we?"



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