Miracle On 41st Street

So I get this phone call from Sacramento telling me the latest news about my younger sibling. She was at the doctors and it seemed that she had an irregular breast exam. When I first heard this news, I wanted to question the validity of this. Not that I am a skeptic, just cautious when it comes to health news and my folks. So far if everything that one of us has reported to having we all would be in the Guinness World Records for the most heinous illnesses survived in one family ever. No one would be able to beat our record. But I did not question it too much cause somehow it sounded like a possibility. Not that I would wish for anyone to have such a disease, especially cancer, with its little known factor that basically spreads until it is cut off, literally. But as I have learned being in this family for the last 44 years, some of my folks have a pendency to stretch the truth and make a new desk at work a promotion to supervisor and make a common preventive breast exam into breast cancer. This really should not be a surprise to anyone associated with us 608er’s, but I feel again, that regular sucker punch when my infamous mother, Peggy, tells me how devastated she is cause her daughter is going through this horrible time in her life. I have been getting regular breast exams for the last 10 years on my birthday. I do this because I watched my mother-in-law, go through the process of losing both breasts followed by chemo with radiation. I am telling you it is not pretty nor easy. She did it with such dignity and humbleness it made me almost like her. But that itself taught me to honor this body I been given and check my girls regularly. So Peggy says that one of my siblings is going to be “watched” for the next year or so, I was stunned. What does this mean? I have so many questions, such as, does she have cancer? Was it lumps? How many? What kind of doctor did the test? What the hell is going on? I have never heard of the wait and see when suspected cancer is involved in someone under 70, but hell I am no doctor. Now less than a week later Peggy reports that this same sibling has stomach or bladder cancer. WOW! Now the cancer has left the breast and moved to the stomach! And the miracle is she does not have to spend one day in the hospital! She must have a powerful healing properties or she is the greatest storyteller ever and I am wasting my time with writing. My belief is, as a person with a unpredictable disease, life is hard enough without trying to make folks feel sorry for you because you have some catastrophic catastrophe (which really only happens if you happen to be a cartoon character). Maybe I am wrong, I should pray for those who need help, but I dislike being used and more over I don’t like praying needlessly for something that is not remotely the truth. I do hope that all is well with with my sibling. I hope that her world is filled with peace and joy. But I also hope that when we are in our 70’s and our days are limited to months rather than years, that we don’t have wonder if she ever lived a day with the truth.That in itself would be a miracle on 41st street. The miracle of truth.