Three and a half years ago, I stood on the second to the last step of my staircase. I was eye level with Big Lou. Big Lou is my brother in law. He is 6-3, 250#. He projects strength and protection. It was the holidays, and family was over.

Big Lou is concerned, he wrinkles his brow. He is asking me how I feel. He asks it intently. What's next medically. I tell him in my raspy voice that I'm going in for a pet scan tomorrow, "because it will light everything up". It's what the doctor told me. In retrospect, I don't know what the hell that means. What will it light up, what does it mean if it's lit up? I took it on faith, and I am surprised that, upon saying it, the knit in big Lou's eyebrow doesn't vanish. My faith is not shared by Big Lou.

I don't know what is supposed to light up, why, or what it means if it does light up. Or, what it means if nothing is lit up. And what we do next in either case. I have placed myself completely in the care of my doctors, and have nothing else to offer anyone. But I am sick. I don't have the energy to think deeply, or sequentially about my health or illness. I have enough energy, barely, to just live.

The pause goes on, and on. Long after the play in my head stopped. It makes me think there's something I don't know. You know the saying, the things we know and the things we don't know we don't know. I didn't know to doubt my doctors and to second guess and press them. I didn't know because I didn't have the energy for it. I found out later why I didn't have the energy for it.

All along, I had placed my trust in my health. I was young, why wouldn't I? Then, when it was abundantly apparant that I wasn't healthy, all that was left was for me to turn it over to the doctors to cure me. That's their job, right?

There was no plan B. There was no co-doctoring or co-patienting. I was sick, now heal me doctor. I wasn't ready for medecine in 2010, for all the doctors who hadn't a clue and didn't know how to say so. All the doctors who knew how to scratch their heads, but who didn't know how to ask for help.  All of the resources of modern medecine on their hands; working for a larger, respected hospital in a major metropolitan area, that is a part of a larger network. I'm talking about you, Dr. Casey.

I wasn't prepared for Dr. Casey. It's like shorthand for a form of idiocy. Casey the idiot. I'd compare him to Mighty Casey, the baseball poem, but he sure wasn't mighty and sure as shit didn't deserve the immortalization of a poem.

Matter of fact, harking back to that conversation on the steps of my living room, I was there because of Casey. It was John Cohn, MD who ordered the PET Scan--what Casey should have done the first week of November, that blithering idiot. No, Cohn wound up the plan B. It was Cohn who said the obscure words "everything will light up". John Cohn ordered up the PET, and the next three weeks were a whirlwind of tests, biopsies, doctors and ending with my first chemotherapy on the 23rd of December.

I have made it three years, now, since my last chemo. In the literature, they measure your survival from the date of diagnosis. Once the results of that PET scan came back, it was pretty much a done deal: lymphoma. The 'lit up' portions correlated and explained the swollen lymph nodes. In my neck. Clavicle. Groin. In my belly.

I was into Dr. Nate Evan's operating room room within the week. The PET was on a Friday, then the consultation with Nate Evans, on a Monday. Then the operating room, then Dr. Rose. Dr. Cohn planned the whole thing out. Made the appointments. Formed contingency plans, A, B, C. John Cohn moved with a sense of urgency.

I guess Rose was about 18 Dec. So, operation must have been 14 or 15th of Dec. and consultation must have been 12th. So, PET must have been about 12/5.

It was a blur. The blur ended 3 years ago, next month, when I had my last 'cycle' of chemo. Now all that's left is for me to make sense of it. This is how it's done.