Whammy.

Now, this is a story all about how my life got flipped-turned upside down. And I'd like to take a minute, just sit right there...

Only in this story, I didn't become the Fresh Prince of Bel Aire.

It started with what we thought was the just the flu. Dad just wasn't feeling his best. He had an upset stomach, aches and pains, a blah feeling that he just couldn't shake. It would come and go, each time getting a little worse. Eventually, he went to the doctor. Diagnosis: Sinus infection. No big deal. He had his fair share of those in his life. When that didn't get better and more symptoms popped up, he went back to the doctor. This time he added pain in the side and a loss of appetite to the symptoms he was feeling. The Doctor was sure it was a gallbladder problem.  They did some blood tests and that level came back elevated. All he needed was to remove the gallbladder and he would be as good as new. Man, IF ONLY that would have been true. They needed to set up an ultrasound to see how bad the gallbladder had gotten before they could take it out. 

It was a text message. Just one text message and my life would never be the same. It came from my mom the day that they were doing the ultrasound.

It just said call me when you get off work. That's never a good thing in a family that communicates through text messages 90% of the time. Talking on the phone means something serious. Something bad. And call her when I'm not at work? That definitely meant something bad was waiting for me on the other end of the telephone. I couldn't wait until I got off work. I called her right away. Her voice was strained, tired, deflated. She got right to the point. Gallbladder is fine but they saw spots on the liver. They need to do a biopsy to figure out what they are and where they came from. They think it might be cancer. But Liver Cancer is rare. That means it started somewhere else and has moved over there. But they still don't know. Nothing certain. Tests. More tests.

I did what anyone member of the 21st century did. I fired up the Google machine and read the top results. Cancer. Cancer. Leasions. Leasions arent bad! I went with that one. Convinced myself that everything was going to be okay. They werent tumors, they were just leasions. Leasions could be anything. Hell, most of them are beign. They dont even opperate on them.

My mom knew better. Thirty years as a nurse took away her optimisim. In the back of my mind, I knew too. I just couldn't admit it. Cancer doesn't happen to my family. It just happens to other people. In movies. In newspaper articles. On sad posts on Facebook. Not my family.

Even when they were doing the biopsy, I was convinced that the doctor was going to say that it was nothing. We got my Dad home and comfortable from having a huge needle in his liver. The doctor called quicker than we expected. I couldn't help but feel like I was in the game Press Your Luck. The entire time my mom was talking to the doctor I kept thinking, "no whammys, no whammys, no whammys." I was wrong.

It was cancer. Pancreatic Cancer.

Whammy.