Abruptly

I think what she meant was that I am most likely cancer-free. As far as she can tell. Not that she would actually say it. Not that there are any guarantees. From the pathology report of what was removed during the surgery, my breast surgeon said that I had had “a very good response to the chemo treatment.”  In other words, as the chemo coursed through the blood vessels, it ate away at the cancer until there were only six small spots left, the largest only a half centimeter thick, and there was no sign of malignancy in the margins around the original mass, the lymphatics, or even the nodes, which had shown malignancy in the original biopsy. So (hopefully) that’s that. (Although I still have radiation and more drug therapy to make sure the monster doesn’t come back, and I have several years’ wait before anyone says the words cancer free.) So it looks like God has answered so many prayers, and I feel thanks welling up inside me for the good news I have gotten so far.

Hierve el agua, Oaxaca

The only thing was that the doctor’s news was so abrupt after such a long process. There is all that time in the chemo chair, all those stays in the hospital, then surgery and the weeks to heal so the stitches could come out (no one has said anything about taking out the nine inches of stitches, which seem to have disappeared on their own—maybe it’s a miracle--and if they haven’t, I’m taking them to my grave), and then I wait 45 minutes in the doctor’s office while other women come and go, and my little niece that we’re babysitting for the day gets restless “reading” Maclean’s, and then I go in and change, and get examined, and then…there it is. “You’ve had a very good response to the chemo treatment. You’re free to go.”

It’s so sudden, so abrupt. There is still uncertainty, but this pathology report is the only news I’m likely to get during this year of treatment, and the news is good. I wonder at how abrupt news comes to us, news of any kind. Like a cliff. Like the earthquake in Chile. Or when you found out you were pregnant (ok, not the same kind of thing). Maybe all the momentous things of life are that way. I think of a certain wedding I’m helping to host. All these months of planning and anticipation, and then it will be over in a few hours, and the couple will look at each other and think, “We’re married. We’re really married.”  I think of Philip, leaving home a year early, changing his graduation date abruptly, from one day to the next. I’m still getting used to it, having him gone. Good news. Bad news. It changes things radically, so abruptly, sometimes like an invisible tornado dropping Dorothy in Oz.

Hierve el Agua

The people that Jesus healed must have felt that way, too, and that’s why he always assured them that it was true, yes, they were healed, and they could pick up their mat and just walk away. And maybe Jesus felt that way himself, knowing that his Father had been setting up his plan of redemption for thousands of years, since the fall of the first couple, and His promise to them, and since the calling of Abraham, too, and His promise to him. And Jesus would fulfill that plan in one microsecond on a Sunday morning, in a cave. I bet, because he was human, it amazed him, too, as it did all of the rest of us, with the abruptness of it. The disciples must have felt that way when Jesus’ ministry was so suddenly cut off after just three years, and then again when he came back to them, and then again when, after a few days, he disappeared for good. His return will be like that, you know. Sudden. Abrupt After all that time, just… done. “You’re free to go.” We won’t have to wait any five years to see how things turn out.

And some day, abruptly, we will be with God, for death is the ultimate sudden good news, and we will be looking back on all of this, and the feeling will switch, and all of this that we live now will feel sudden while our time with God will seem like what we’ve always been waiting for. But strangely, it will feel like a constant surprise, like constant good news, just getting better and better as we grow.