Over a week of coughing up phlegm, speaking through a stale, worn-out voice. The flu is finally passing.
Today, I ran a half-marathon just to quiet my mind. To breathe. To try to hold myself steady before the storm of this coming week. Soon, I’ll learn what comes next, treatment, work, life. The shape of my future.
I hate being in this space of not-knowing. There’s comfort in normalcy and routine, and yet I feel severed from both. Everything I do feels like it’s for everyone else. What I want always feels just out of reach. So, I keep moving through the motions, numb and muted, the inner world tucked somewhere I can’t quite access.
Everything for others, rarely for myself. Except when I’m running. That’s where I still recognize me.
I started watching Breaking Bad again. Somehow it feels fitting now, with this diagnosis looming over everything. Maybe I’m trying to channel a bit of Heisenberg…. Walter White…. someone who seized control when life threatened to define him. It’s strange and comforting to see Albuquerque again, the city we once left to escape crime and heaviness.
This week I find out what happens next. Please let it be bearable. Please let it be something I can carry.
I can’t help but think…. I hate this. All of it.
Life feels sharp and unkind right now and that’s just the truth.
Fifty-five miles per hour down a two-lane rural road. I caught it in my peripheral vision—right shoulder—front paws stretched, hind legs exploding across the asphalt.
I glanced at the rear-view mirror; another vehicle trailed close behind. Stopping wasn’t an option. An oncoming car approached from ahead—swerving wasn’t an option either.
Maybe it will stop. Maybe it will make it across.
I held my line. It ran.
I felt no thud, heard nothing. For a moment, I assumed it had made it.
Then, in the driver-side mirror, I saw a tight curl of fur lying in the opposite lane. It hadn’t made it. It must have collided with the oncoming vehicle’s tire.
Still, I felt no sadness. No pain.
And suddenly I was twelve again—my mom driving me to a cross-country meet in the dark hours before dawn, heading toward the mountain to catch the district bus to Deming, New Mexico. A rabbit darted out. There was no time to brake, no room to swerve. The heavy thud echoed through the car.
I cried the rest of the way. My first encounter with roadkill—so sudden, so brutal.
But now—just another drive. I felt nothing.
Life. Death.
One minute, a squirrel sprinting across the road; the next, stillness. Its body will feed scavengers—crows, maybe others.
Gadolinium, a rare-earth element forged in the violent deaths of ancient stars, will enter my bloodstream tomorrow. It feels surreal to think that something born billions of years ago, long before Earth even existed, is now being used to help diagnose what’s happening inside me.
It will arrive already chelated, safely held in a molecular cage so it can move through my body without reacting. Once inside, it will subtly change the way water protons relax after being excited by radio waves, creating brighter MRI scans so doctors can see abnormalities more clearly.
I’ll admit… I was nervous at first. I’ve never needed this procedure before. Learning the science behind it….the physics, the chemistry, the careful design… helped. Knowledge can have a calming effect sometimes.
I became curious about where this element comes from. Gadolinium isn’t called “rare” because there’s so little of it, but because extracting it is difficult. If my contrast agent turns out to be Bayer’s Gadavist or Bracco’s ProHance, odds are the gadolinium was mined at Bayan Obo Mine in Inner Mongolia, the largest rare-earth element mine on the planet.
Inner Mongolia and Outer Mongolia were once both part of the greater Mongol Empire under Genghis Khan in the 13th century. Outer Mongolia declared independence in 1911, later solidified with Soviet support in 1921, while Inner Mongolia remained under Chinese control for its proximity to China. Still, both regions share deep cultural and historical roots. I didn’t expect my MRI prep to lead me through this history… yet here I am.
Tomorrow, I’ll lie still for about 45 minutes, listening to the rhythmic pulse of the machine. I think I’ll picture the gadolinium moving through my veins, guiding my mind across the region where it was mined. I’ll imagine the hum of magnetic resonance blending with the low, resonant tones of Mongolian throat singing. Somehow, this image brings me peace and I’m not even in the machine yet.
It’s strange…. almost comforting…..to think of this element’s journey: born in exploding stars, trapped in ancient rock, mined, refined, chelated, packaged, transported halfway around the world… just to arrive here, inside me.
It feels like a thread……something cosmic……. woven through time, now intersecting with my own story. I don’t fully understand the bigger design, but I hope there is one. Tomorrow is just another step, to help me heal.
5:30 a.m. I woke up and checked my email before my eyes were even fully open. A new test result has been posted…read the alert.
I reached for my glasses on the nightstand, opened MyChart, and there it was….. the pathology results I’d been waiting on all weekend.
Invasive carcinoma…… Not the words I wanted to see.
I woke my husband and whispered, “They posted the results… carcinoma.” He didn’t need any more explanation. He just held me. “I’m sorry” he said
I made a joke……because that’s what I do when things get too real. “Well… can I finally get the long-haired dachshund I always wanted?” “Yes,” he said. “We can get a dog now.”
Small victory.
I pictured an elderly rescue…..one who just needs somewhere soft to land for his final years. Definitely a boy… I have no energy for a dramatic little girl dog.
Around 10 a.m. the physician called. I pretended I hadn’t read the report already. “Do you have time to talk?” “Yes.” I said. “It is cancer. Not benign.” She said.
“Ok.” I answered. She paused……. maybe waiting for emotion I didn’t have yet. I wasn’t sure what the correct response should be… so I stayed quiet.
She then proceeded to tell me the MRI would be moved up and went through the details of what happens next.
“We’re still piecing everything together.” I listened, and then I drifted…..”She does this every day…” I thought.
Delivering life-altering news to strangers. I couldn’t do what she does.
So… the waiting is over. Now it’s one day at a time……… But then again. It’s always been that way, hasn’t it?
I don’t want any of this. I wish things could simply unravel the way nature intended.
Or maybe nature did intend this.
I don’t know.
Life makes no sense to me.
But…. there’s an adventure waiting for me next summer, so I’m choosing to move forward with whatever…. I can’t say I really care at this point.
If I’m being honest… I’d rather die in the desert anyway.
But for now—today—I’m still here. So we keep going. I’ll just have to shift my mental focus… that’s all.
Waiting breeds anticipation. What is anticipation, really….at least in physiological terms? It’s the body’s quiet chemistry experiment: neurotransmitters surging, hormones firing, the amygdala alert. Cortisol and norepinephrine rise, with a delicate dash of dopamine, hope and fear mixing in the bloodstream.
While those chemicals play their dance, the mind searches for distraction. Maybe by finishing that half-completed 1,000-piece Disney Stitch puzzle abandoned days ago. Or by curling up in bed, trying to ignore the dull ache and the bruised puncture site that throbs like a simple reminder of uncertainty. It’s a kind of suspended malaise, life moving, but slower now.
I think again of the circle of life, how, when Norman passed away a couple years ago, and Belinda was born. Death and birth, endings and beginnings, braided so tightly you can’t tell where one stops and the other begins. Now, it feels like the universe is staging a repeat: my boss’s daughter about to arrive as I await results that could mark another ending….or a continuation of my own story.
I hope for the latter, but we don’t know. We wait.
Anticipation….it’s like sending a text and watching the screen, willing a reply to appear. The same surge of chemicals. The same pulse of aliveness. In this waiting, I am acutely present, every sound is amplified. Every ding on my phone a jolt of hope, maybe it’s MyChart. Maybe the answer is here.
Everything around me feels placed with intention. Every object, every breath, part of the stillness before revelation. What will it be?
I tell myself I’ll prepare for both outcomes. I’ll steady myself either way. For now, we remain mid-air…..like a coin tossed high, spinning, glinting, turning, until the inevitable drop decides my fate.
I envisioned myself running into the ancient city of Karakorum…sweaty, salt-streaked, and stinking of seven days beneath the Mongolian sun. My pack bounced against my back as the crew clapped, cheering me toward the finish line.
“You doing, OK?” someone called out.
Then, suddenly, I was back.
The sound faded, replaced by the hum of the ultrasound machine. The nurse pressed down hard on the already tender spot on my left breast. “I’m sorry,” she said gently. “We’ve got about three more minutes. You’re doing good.”
“Ok, Paige. Thank you,” I managed.
“Why are we doing this again?” I asked.
“Vascularity. To ensure there is no bleeding.”
“Ok. Paige.” I said.
I opened my eyes and stared up at the ceiling tiles. A sea turtle had been painted across one of them—its fins outstretched, floating in an endless white. I closed my eyes, clenched the fist on my trembling left arm, and focused on my breath. Inhale. Exhale. Through the nose. Slow. Controlled.
Her voice broke through again: “When you go home, make sure you—”
But I drifted. The pain was dull, radiating, and I tried to escape it by slipping back into the desert.
None of the Biopsy Videos I watched in preparation for this procedure had prepared me for this…..the raw ache, the pressure.
“Ok? Did you understand?……. Ok??” she said, her voice growing louder.
“Yes,” I replied, though I hadn’t heard everything.
“Twenty minutes on, twenty minutes off?” I asked, uncertain.
“Don’t worry. It’ll be in your post procedure notes.”
“Ok” I said again, quietly.
The last three minutes dragged on like hours. It was the longest five minutes of my life—the worst part of the biopsy….the unrelenting pressure on freshly punctured flesh.
I could still hear the metallic click-click of the core needle echoing in my left ear as I lay on my side, thinking absurdly about the sterility of the instruments, about my cells traveling to pathology, about whether a human or a Machine Vision AI system would be used to interpret them.
Next, I was escorted to a second room for what they described as a gentle mammogram.
When it was all finally over, they wrapped me tightly in a bandage and let me go.
“Samples are collected. It’s out of my hands now.” I thought.
I walked into the lobby and saw my husband waiting patiently. I couldn’t say much. Didn’t want to say much. There were others in the lobby observing my exit.
“I’ll go get the car” he said.
My husband pulled into the front of the building and I started to cry as soon as I got into the car. Now I understood why the prepare for procedure notes insisted you have a driver.
The pain wasn’t just physical…..it was also the weight of uncertainty.
I clenched my fist, breathed through it, and saw myself again beneath the Mongolian sky……running, enduring, surviving.
I found out today that James Patterson will be in town tomorrow. At home, I have a running joke about his Alex Cross series. I started reading the books after The Great American Read list came out a few years ago and decided I’d take on the challenge of reading all 33 of his novels in the series, as I’d work on the Great American Read list in alphabetical order, of course, because I have to do everything in order.
I made it to book five or six…. I can’t even remember now but Gary Soneji was still wreaking havoc. At one point, I caught myself thinking, My gosh, how many more close encounter experiences can Alex Cross survive? And yet, every time I see another Patterson book at the store, I can’t help but laugh and admire his unstoppable creativity. The man has written well over 200 books!
I grew to admire him even more after watching his MasterClass on writing. I’ve taken his advice to heart and started applying it to my own craft, hoping that one day I’ll write with even a fraction of his storytelling power.
Tomorrow’s event is already booked, and I’m on the waitlist but here’s hoping I get to see him in person.
My old job just opened again, the one just 30 minutes from my home. It’s under new management now. Funny enough, the manager running it is the same one I was originally supposed to work with when I first got the position. Then she left, and I ended up with someone else. Someone tough to work for.
Now I’m doing a 2-hour commute every day because of it. It’s been 3 years. But honestly, I’m better off. My current job is fun in its own way, challenging, complicated, and full of opportunities to improve. It keeps me on my toes, and I’ve grown from it.
Still, today I got a couple of messages from my old team: “Please apply. We liked working with you.” And I’ll admit, it made me pause. Because I liked working with them too.
But when I really think about it… I’m better off now…. Right?
It’s Wednesday, and I still don’t have an appointment for my biopsy. I had been told to expect a call by today, but no such luck.
At lunch time, I called Dr. S office. “No, ma’am, we don’t have the referral just yet,” said the kind administrator. “But let me go ahead and set up your chart so that once we do receive the referral, our coordinator can move forward with scheduling.”
I gave her my information, hung up, and immediately called my primary. “Hi, I’m calling about a referral.” “Yes, ma’am, is this regarding the CPAP?” “No, this is about the biopsy.” “Oh yes, I see that right here too. We’ll send the referral to the fax number once again.” “Ok, Great! Thanks,” I said, and hung up.
Later that evening, after work, I tried reaching the specialist’s office again, but by then they had already been closed for an hour according to their answering service.
“I’ll try again tomorrow” I thought.
Thankfully, work has been an incredible distraction. It always has been. This weekend I’m scheduled to work, and for once I’m grateful. Staying busy keeps me from sitting in the silence of the unknown, letting my mind spiral. It’s the long drives, the late nights, the idle moments when the thoughts begin to eat away at you.
And today’s driving thoughts? How our healthcare systems need improvement. We’re still using fax machines to transmit critical referrals? There’s no universal system to manage them? No secure real-time dashboards that can track the process without violating HIPAA? The handoffs between patient, doctor, insurance, imaging, and paperwork form a maze that slows care. In medicine, process improvements aren’t just helpful…..they’re necessary.
During the commute…I tried calling my brother, hopeful he would pick-up so I could inform him of what’s going on, only to discover he had changed his number. Not what I expected.
When I finally got home, a letter from the mammogram center was waiting.
It was the report.
Findings: 1 cm x 0.9 cm x 0.8 cm irregular, echogenic mass with suspicion of malignancy, located at 3 o’clock posterior depth on the left breast. Results labeled “Abnormal/Suspicious,” with a recommendation for an ultrasound-guided core biopsy.
Of course, I had to look it up. The possible causes range from benign to malignant. My hope is still firmly with benign…. and I’m anxious to see the confirming data.
Well, in the words of a Courageous Cowboy: Let ’er buck.
At 4:15 p.m., I went in for a short notice doctor’s office visit. They called me into a small waiting room where the nurse checked my weight and vitals…120/60 blood pressure, 100% oxygen, and a resting heart rate of 52 bpm. “Looks good,” she said with a smile. “Dr. C. will be with you in just a minute,” she added in her soft Southern drawl.
I sat in the cold, refrigerator-like room, taking in its minimalist cleanliness, the bare walls, the neatly organized tools, the set of ear canal testers. It was quiet, almost too quiet, until the sliding door opened and Dr. C stepped inside.
“Hello,” she greeted. “Howdy,” I replied, trying to lighten the mood.
“Now, I’m assuming they’ve already gone over this with you?” she asked gently.
I explained that I had received a call from the physician at the Mammography center. They confirmed it was not a cyst…it was a mass.
“Correct,” she said, glancing at the report. “They want you to get a biopsy, and that will be scheduled at a doctor’s office. I’d recommend N.F. They have two excellent doctors there, and one in particular has an excellent bedside manner.”
She looked at me carefully. “How do you feel about that?”
I told her that a friend had recommended a doctor at the F. , Dr. S., and that I would prefer the referral be sent to her office instead.
She nodded. “That’s fine. Just so you’re aware, if it turns out to be positive, the doctor’s office will take it out.”
“Positive?” I echoed.
“Cancer,” she clarified, hesitating, as though the word itself was heavy.
I had already noticed her body language when she entered, hesitant, with the kind of facial expressions that say I don’t want to have this conversation with my patient. The concern in her posture said the rest.
“Well, there’s still a chance it could be nothing, correct?” I asked.
“Yes, of course,” she assured me.
She reminded me that she had read biopsy reports before that turned out benign.
I told her, I’d remain optimistic that this too would amount to nothing.
I checked out, walked to my car, and drove home. But when I stepped out of the garage and made the short walk to my front door, the weight of it all finally hit me. In that hollow stretch of silence, I couldn’t help but shed a few tears.
Journaling was Recommended 