The results from my bloodwork gradually trickled in to my patient portal: it was one normal result after another. My entire metabolic panel came back normal, all of my blood counts were right in range. I was the picture of health, except for the CT, which said that I was not. I had been working a lot on my compost system and briefly wondered if I had perhaps given myself a bad case of farmer’s lung, and it wasn’t really cancer after all. I imagined what a funny story it would make. Then, as the sun set, the cancer markers started coming in.
The first few were normal, then the CEA result came in. CEA is a general marker for several types of cancer. Normal is under 5. Mine was 55. Then another result came in that was way out of range: CA 19-9, the marker for pancreatic cancer. I knew pancreatic cancer by its reputation: deadly, brutal and swift. The result can be elevated in other GI cancers too, so I hoped that it was somehow a less deadly and less aggressive type of cancer.
Sara had been tuned in to the pancreas all along. She was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at 11 and recalled the belly pain and digestive symptoms in the year before her diagnosis. It seemed similar. She had wondered if I might be developing diabetes myself before the CT revealed that it was cancer. It hit me with a sense of dread.
I went to bed, but I didn’t sleep that night. I was dying. I mean, we’re all headed in that direction, but I was on a fast course and I had been for a while without realizing it.