There's a song I keep thinking about. Somehow in the late decade of 2000 to 2010 between the "illegally downloading whatever" time and the "actually signing up for a music streaming service" era I came upon the catalogue of singer/songwriter Gary Gules. You're most likely to know of him from his cover of the Tears for Fears song Mad World from the 2001 movie Donnie Darko.
The song is called Ghosts and includes some of my favorite lines such as "The windmill is poised for the battle/But the fool understands not the game" and "I find solace in all the extremes/In pleasure as well as in pain". Not sure why that's relevant, because what I'm going to write about today are two things: 1. what little I know about what's next and 2. the things that have made me laugh in this bizarre and terrible time.
For the first thing: I have been assigned a nurse navigator and she seems very nice. With her help we may have to shuffle some appointments around because as of right now my first meeting with the oncologist is scheduled before my PET scan and I can surely understand why the oncologist would like to meet after we can get some more information. The nurse navigator made it clear that part of her job is to communicate the urgency while scheduling in the hopes that we can get some of these appointments moved up on the calendar. This is good news to me. Sooner scans = sooner answers, sooner answers = sooner treatment, sooner treatment = sooner me kicking ass and being done with it.
For the second: I am remembering that my dermatologist office piped in the hits of the 80s/90s. I recall enjoying listening to Whitney Houston's How Will I Know before my dermatologist came in to deliver the news that the excision they had done on me turned out to be cancerous. This is not to condemn the dermatologist for piping in awesome music, just one of the things that makes me laugh because it seems so bizarre to me now. I do recall that on the way out they let us take a box of tissues with us, so they are obviously good people.
Another delightful moment was during the examination where the doctor checked all my lymph nodes and whatnot and tried to rule out any damn symptoms. He asked me if I'd had any appetite changes or unexplained weight loss and I'm pretty sure I said "GOD, I WISH, no, but I did eat two hot dogs for dinner last night and I'm ashamed" to which he replied, completely sincerely, that this was not an interrogation. It amused the hell of me then and still does now. I like that doctor, even though he seems remarkably serious. I hope deep down he gets a kick out of the dumb things I say.
So no real news yet, the news is that there's more news. But I'm staying positive because, per usual, I feel fine.
Also if you're interested, here's that song: