It’s not a tumor

Yesterday was joyous. I spent half the afternoon in a doctor’s office and the other half at Verizon. In between each of these amazing experiences I was fielding calls from my mother who is trying to convince me that I have cancer. And by trying to convince me, I mean she was literally saying “people have died a much younger age than yours from this.”

So, to backtrack. About 4 months ago I started noticing blood in my stool. Not really in it per se, but in the wiping process. Anyway, now that you have the specifics, I mentioned it to my husband, who mentioned it to a doctor, who told him it was probably from just eating too much fiber. So I called my mom, who works for Olympus’ EndoTherapy division (i.e. she trains sales people on technology for endoscopies and other butt scopes). I then proceeded to bang my head against my desk for ever mentioning it to her. After many days and countless hours of my life lost on the phone, I convinced my mom to let it go. That I would monitor the blood and if it happened again I would go straight to the doctor.

Well as luck (or maybe just my luck) would have it, it happened again, and again, and again. 5 times total in 8 days. Clearly this is a problem. So yesterday I called my GP and made an appointment for later on in the day, and then I called my mom to tell her I made an appointment. This is when she proceeds to tell me that I have colorectal cancer and in the best case scenario I’ll lose half my anus and live disfigured for the rest of my life. Or the worst will happen and I’ll die. Twenty minutes into this conversation and death was sounding pretty good.

I enter the doctor’s office a shell of the woman I once was, full of fear and anxiety and thoughts of chemo and disfigured anuses (really not pretty thoughts). And the last shred of diginity I still have flies out the window when I get to drop trou in front of a complete stranger who anally probes me. And just when I thought I couldn’t possibly feel any more embarrassed, I find out that I have hemorrhoids.

Beautiful. Absolute perfection.

One trip to CVS, $10 and 30 suppositories later I’m back on the phone with my mother explaining to her that it’s not cancer, just hemorrhoids. Lucky me. When she starts explaining to me that my DOCTOR is wrong and hemorrhoids are merely just cancer polyps and I’m still going to die. And I have to go to a GI doctor and have a colonoscopy and request another test for something else I’ve blocked out of my memory. And then the best part of my whole day took place.

My phone completely shit the bed, turning into a screen filled with rainbows (and in this case puppies and sunshine) smack dab in the middle of her diatribe over my bleeding ass. And all was quiet.

So off I went to the new DMV (aka a Verizon store) where I stood behind this ginormous, sweating woman who was upgrading her phone and asking too many stupid questions about activating voice commands and transferring pictures and using a Bluetooth. Read the god damned manual lady and get the hell out of my way. After 20 minutes of huffing and puffing a la the Big Bad Wolf, I finally get up to the counter only to be told that the Verizon store was merely a cell phone store in Verizon clothing and they can’t service my phone. So I did what any good citizen would have done. I degraded the moron behind the counter with my intellectual wit and extensive vocabulary and then stormed out of the useless store.

I managed to get to a real Verizon store which replaced my phone, which then turned on to reveal a dozen (really, 12) messages from my mother who apparently thought I hung up on her.

Turns out this worked to my advantage because by the time I did actually talk to her 4 hours after my phone broke, she apologized. Apparently I have enough on my plate with being infertile to have to worry about colorectal cancer. I should hang up on her more often.

I mended my wounds with Tostitos and guacamole and several suppositories.

Today my head is still ringing.