"No Recurrent or Residual Disease Identified"

Y'know, it's funny.

Usually you think about positive statements being Good Things and negative statements being Bad Things. But medicine seems to work the other way around.

When I got off the phone with Nurse Patty, who quoted the above statement from the formal result of last Thursday's MRI and -- after I stopped hyperventilating, whooping and jumping around, hugging my wife, and choking back tears -- I started thinking about this.

Negative: Good. Positive: Bad. I wonder why.

(I mean, now that I'm not fretting about the results of last Thursday's MRI, I need something to fret about, don't I?)

Seriously folks, I was deeply concerned about this scan. It had been a long time since my head and neck area were examined this way and, in the words of my E/N/T doc, "If this cancer is coming back, it's likely to do so quickly" or words to that effect. And the reason for him saying that is that Salivary Duct Cancer is classified as "High-Grade." Which is a Bad Thing, because it means it has a reputation for being aggressive.

See? There you go again! "High-Grade": Bad.

I told Nurse Patty that I was sorry not to be at the Medical Center with her, so I could give her a big hug, but she assured me that the next time I visited, that hugs all around would be appropriate and readily accepted. So I gave my wife another hug instead.

The report went on to say that there was some thickening in my epiglottis (which is the magic valve in your throat that channels air into your lungs and food into your tummy -- and not vice versa), which I had suspected, because some food or beverage goes "down the wrong tube" more often than it used to. Nurse Patty said that this condition was caused by the radiation treatments and needs to be monitored, but at the present, it causes me very little trouble.

And there is the situation that my voice modulates itself on its own schedule up and down a half-octave or so, but that's become almost fun. (As in, "I wonder who I'll sound like this afternoon?")

Finally, it says that there have been some other changes in my neck since the surgeries and chemo and radiation therapies. (Well, duh.) But these changes are perfectly workable so far and some of them seem to be receding as I move farther away from my treatments last summer.

I've been telling myself for the last several days that I had done everything I could to contribute to my own healing, and that I was leaving the rest (including the scan results) in God's hands -- where such things belong. And much of the time, I was fine with that. But it is so tempting to try and pull the situation away from Him (or Her) and try to manage the results yourself.

And it occurs to you then how truly powerless you are in situations like this. Take your meds, get plenty of exercise and rest, eat sensibly, of course. But in the end, what your body winds up doing is still mainly out of your control.

I have this image at the moment of all of my doctors and nurses and medical technicians standing together and smiling at me.

They wanted this, too.