the facts and the ghosts

I've always had these weird symptoms, even as a kid - things that were just "off" but couldn't be named. 

Until now.

The hole in my heart was diagnosed in October. It's congenital, which is good to hear. This means I clearly know what it feels like to live with this thing. A lot of people are walking around with something similar and don't even know it. But mine is bigger than most people with a PFO, which means it can be more dangerous is we don't treat it somehow. It's also been creating a weird conglomeration of more serious symptoms lately: weird vision issues, vertigo, and an ambulance trip after a plane flight in 2023.

This is why it needed to be fixed. 

It's also why I literally skipped into my regularly scheduled mammogram in early December, thinking everything was cool.  I was already mildly freaked about my pending heart surgery. Surely my body wasn't scheming an insurrection against this plan.

Ohhhh but it was.

When they asked for another mammogram I knew. When they said we should do an MRI, I knew. When they said we should schedule a biopsy even though it could be nothing, I knew. 

I knew in the same way that the sarcoma scans weren't a "shadow" or "scar tissue".

I knew in the same way the radiologist squinted at a glioblastoma scan and said "it could be benign".

I just knew.

The good news is that both issues are serious but seem treatable.

The "meh" news is that nobody knows how to treat them simultaneously.

The surgery I had planned may not be feasible with the current heart situation. But, fixing the heart means I may not be able to treat the cancer in a timely manner.

This is where the dilemma lies - so I am back to Mayo to get the best help I can in figuring it out.

There is a lot of PTSD for me at that place. Until recently I've managed to avoid the worst of it. Going to anxiety clinic with your kid isn't the same as meeting with oncology, or scheduling surgery. It didn't bring up memories of holding Rico in his hospital bed while the doctors looked at us both with those faces. 

But now, now things feel different, and treatable or not, I have to walk into the same buildings, the same waiting rooms - but also - I am doing it for the same reasons. 

I walk in there to save them, to save us. I walk in with the ghost of his bravery in my soul, his voice in my ear, their hugs wrapped around me, Mike's hand in mine. It's my turn for this adventure. 

And when Mike pulls my head onto his shoulder and says, "I got you, we'll get through this," I see the strength that used to be mine coursing through him. I find myself in his eyes and believe what he says, because those words used to be mine too.