By the Pool

After lunch that day, the two of us sat outside by the pool alone.  We had a million questions and no answers.   The doctor had said that the pathology of the cancer was Grade 1, a good thing.  I was also clinging to one sentence she had said at the end of our conversation: she had patients in the past who were treated successfully and then went to her for fertility treatments.  Did that mean I wouldn’t lose my uterus?  

Of course, while I was sitting on a chaise lounge under the palm trees, I googled endometrial cancer on my iPhone.  I didn’t find much, except that most patients are post-menopausal and that depending on the stage, the treatment is a hysterectomy with or without other therapies.  I wanted to do a more sophisticated search on the actual computer but didn’t yet want to research my new diagnosis in my mother’s kitchen.  I pretended to read a book (Jodi Picoult - one of my favorites!) but couldn’t focus on any of the words on the page.  

By the pool, we talked about the next obvious step.  We needed to tell my family.  That night we were headed to my sister and brother-in-law’s house with my parents for dinner.  We decided we would tell them at dinner, when our awesome nieces and nephew were upstairs sleeping.  I had been feeling queasy since I got the news, but you know that feeling you get in your stomach when you go downhill really fast on a roller coaster?  It happened to me whenever I thought about telling my family.  

And I will never forget what my husband told me that day by the pool, “ I love you and I am not going anywhere.”  Not that I had any doubt, but it was still nice to hear him say that he was going to be by my side.