Today I sat in a doctor's chair all over again. A mystifying rash has almost imperceptibly been spreading in a spot for a few months now. One doctor after another has been baffled, suggesting this or that. Is it fungal? Is it staph? Is it a skin cancer unrelated to the original cancer?
Finally I had to make an appointment at the dermatologist's office. We really need answers, in case it is a new cancer or related to the old cancer.
And sure enough, the doctor wanted to do a skin biopsy.
I was okay with that, having hoped they would do one, just in case. But the thought of "biopsy" sort of sent shivers up my mental spine.
The last ones I had were anything but lovely and comfortable.
"The punch is like a cookie cutter," the nurse explained. "We'll numb it with lidocaine first. And then afterward it will need two sutures."
So the biopsy "punch" (after the initial lidocaine needle jab)was significant enough to need two sutures.
Please!
For a moment, all I could think about was some of the needle jabs I've gotten in the last three years, especially the one the day before my May surgery. I found myself yesterday sitting in that doctor's chair (or was it a patient's chair?) starting to feel resentful.
Not another needle jab.
Please.
Not another biopsy.
Please.
Then I caught myself. If I have learned something during this cancer journey, it has been to not worry about tomorrow before it comes.
Not to worry about the pain of the needle jab until it actually jabs. Why ruin the bearable present with imagining the future unbearable pain? I sat in the sterile doctor's office looking at the wall and door ahead of me and willing myself to think about something else--something besides the needle and the punch.
I was having a hard time.
Maybe I could have thought about the beautiful burning bush blazing red leaves in front of our pastor's wife's home, where she made me stand so she could take a picture and send it to me.
I could have thought of any number of things. Mainly, I just tried to not give in to resentment over a little needle jab while I had to wait for the nurse to run upstairs for an instrument they needed that they don't keep in stock downstairs.
The puncher maybe. Who knows?
And then I thought of something to be thankful for--that I was not alone.
Jonathan had come in with me and was sitting in a chair behind me--the one who took me out to eat in Custer the night before, after a funeral and burial. We ordered one plate and shared it at a Mexican restaurant--unusual in that it doesn't serve alcohol.
Jonathan could have stayed out in the van doing whatever on his phone. Jonathan himself is struggling with painful knee issues after hours crawling under the Winner church and having his knee swell and flare up with a case of something that is such a long word I don't remember it. He was limping stiffly down the stairs to my appointment in the basement of the building, forgetting we could have taken the elevator.
"Thank you for coming in with me," I said to him over my shoulder as I waited for the jab.
It was so much better than being resentful.
So much better than imagining pain.
So much better to choose to trust God and give thanks.
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