oh my blog!- Laura Darby Singh -

Years on the equator.  There have been plenty of tribulations involved with living and being in Africa, but one that most others don’t have to concern themselves with is the impacts of the more direct sunlight that hits the equator.

Weekends at the coast include others frolicking in the pool at noon, while I hide in the shade until 3pm or 4pm.  Mornings at the beach usually include setting a timer for ten minutes to limit the duration of my exposure.

When friends wanted to walk along the beach at noon to go and get gelato, I had to decline.  My one friend was really pushy, and I had to outline, clearly, what an hour-long walk on the beach meant for me.  It was still tough; not only did it leave me alone, but they all sent me photos of eating (very delicious) gelato.

Running the Lewa Marathon in 2014

I’m the only person on safari in a long-sleeved shirt and hat.  When I ran the Lewa Marathon in 2014, I did so in SPF 70, a long-sleeved SPF shirt, and a hat.

Careful.  Proactive. It’s never enough.

In 2010, right before my wedding, I had an irregular mole on the back of my right arm.  It was excised, and found to be malignant.

There I was, mere months away from my wedding, with cancer.  It was terrifying.  I remember foolishly checking the internet for my prognosis.  They’d told me it was Level 4, but the internet showed me results for Stage 4 Melanoma as well.  And the prognosis was Death.

They sent a plastic surgeon to remove a one inch area around where my mole had been.  I wanted to ask him a hundred questions.  What did it mean, this cancer?  But he wasn’t an oncologist.  A fact he outlined as much when he told me that asking him these questions was “like asking a man who makes pizza how to make bagels.”

The edges of the tissue taken from my surgery were clear.  I was told to go about my daily life, be careful of sun exposure, and get all my moles checked every six months for 2 years, then every year after that.

Oops (in DRC in 2011)

I’ve been checked every six months since.  I still end up with a bad burn maybe once a year, because the fishes were too exciting while I snorkeled and I forgot to reapply sunscreen, or I was participating in one of my dearest friend’s weddings, and the bridesmaids were sitting out at noon under a transparent awning.

Melanoma has “colored” my life,  but I had believed that it was a cost I had paid the price for, and compensated for accordingly.

This past month, in an effort to (obnoxiously) show my aging mother how adults behave when they’re sick, I took a trip to urgent care when I had moderate stomach pain and a fever. In all likelihood, with twins, if I hadn’t been at my mother’s house and trying to futilely demonstrate something, I would not have gone.

But I went, and it ended up changing everything.

Because of the location of my pain, they suspected gallstones, so they ordered a CT scan.  It seemed like overkill at the time, but it was a new facility, and I have really good insurance, so the cynical part of me assumed that it was some kind of quota that needed filling.

It was also a partial feeling of relief, not only from the pain (thanks, morphine), but from the wear and tear of watching 8 month old twin boys 24/7.  If anything, it might yield a couple hours of rest and sleep and then I could go back to my mother’s house and start again.

A doctor came in with a nurse who, throughout the course of the interaction, said nothing but constantly pushed her face into the saddest face it could muster.  Or perhaps that was just the way her face looked, but I’ll tell you, she isn’t the person I would want giving me happy news.

“Listen, sweetheart,” the doctor began, as I forced myself not to gag at the unnecessary pet name, “it’s not good.  They found a ping pong ball-sized mass in your liver.  And another between your stomach and your pancreas.  It’s probably cancer.”

Resting Sad Face nurse gazed at me intently, sadly.

I reach back for what I might have asked, or said, at this moment, because in my recollection, it feels blank.

It wasn’t real, whatever it was. I didn’t have cancer.  I’m 37. I’m young. Or rather, “young.”  I’m not sick. I’m never sick. I’m robust, and do all kinds of things.

I just had babies! I’m supposed to be their mom forever.

I asked perfunctory questions, but none of it really felt real, all the while staving off the face of the Resting Sad Face nurse, still standing there, staring stoically, with the underlying message: You are going to die.

My denial was helped by the fact that the radiology report also claimed to see evidence of the removal of my gall bladder.  HAHAHA suckers.  I had that! It was clearly the scan of someone else, I thought in the back of my head.

The “sweetheart” doctor tried to explain to me that I might have had it removed during other procedures, and not have known, because silly me, maybe I don’t keep track of my organs or my health.  I have cancer, after all.

Or did I?

They asked me a lot about my time in (the country of) Africa, raising their eyebrows and taking special note of every malady I described.

I told my joke about “SPED” (Sudden Poop Explosion Disease), our riff on a Cards Against Humanity card that we used to describe the common occurrence in Nairobi of eating a bad salad and spending the next day in the toilet.

But the jokes couldn’t sustain. Adam was holding my hand, and he’s got the worst poker face ever for someone who is actually good at poker, and he was so scared, and they weren’t letting me go back to my mother’s house.

I was being taken, in an ambulance, to the big hospital so I could be admitted and have a biopsy and be a sick person now.

I cried, upset for scaring him, and honestly, upset that this awful experience was just continuing on and on.  He offered to ride with me in the ambulance, but, more important to me was that he take care of our precious bozos.

I rode to the hospital alone, and read the book Adam had brought to me that I normally only had time to read in the bathtub once a week. They took my blood pressure every 10 minutes during the hour-long drive. It was normal.  I felt normal.

I was wheeled on my (unnecessary) gurney to my hospital room.  Was this my new reality? The nurse came to take gallons of my blood.  I tried to be jovial, but the specter of cancer kept looming over me.  This was all not real. It wasn’t my life. It had all been a terrible mistake.   It was someone else’s scan. I kept mentioning the “gaff” of my gall bladder, hoping that someone would pick up on it and realize that WHOOPS, time to go home, sorry, Laura!

Adam had brought me pens and paper to color and doodle, and I tried to just listen to my audiobook and take the time to relax.  It would be the first night I would sleep somewhere the whole night without the boys, so maybe it was my chance to get some sleep after months and months of 3-5 hours a night.

But I didn’t sleep.  I discovered late Saturday night that I would be admitted for at least two days, as biopsies weren’t done on Sundays unless they were emergencies.

Adam and my mom brought the boys to the hospital on Sunday, and I tried to make things as normal as possible, while in the back of my head, wondering if these kinds of visits would be our new “normal.”

Despite the gravity of the situation, part of me had trouble taking it seriously.  During their visit, a nurse took me aside, because the fellow who had attended to me on Saturday night was panicking because he had searched through all the tropical disease annals and couldn’t find “SPED” and could I give them any other names by which it went?

Part of me wanted it to be a tropical disease, even if my doctors weren’t above believing in a made up one. Any option that didn’t include cancer.

But during the twins’ visit, I also got taken for an ultrasound of my liver, and there it was a big, irregular mass.  Big enough that I could see it on the monitor.  Ultrasound techs aren’t allowed to discuss your “results” with you, but it was impossible to miss.  The tech left the room to go consult with the staff radiologists, leaving the door open.  The ward had once been a children’s ward, so some of the tiles on the floor were Monopoly tiles.

I waited to be brought back to my room, to my family, to the life that seemed so perfect, if sleepless, and stared at the floor.  Cancer.  Do not pass go.  Do not collect $200.

Even if I’d avoided googling (since Dr Google prescribes only death), I knew enough colloquially to know that liver cancer isn’t good.

Around 5pm, after a day of “fun” at the hospital, it was time for the boys’ to go back to my mom’s and go to bed, leaving me alone in my hospital room again.

No one can comfort you in these moments, because no one has enough information with which to comfort you. My biopsy would be the following morning, after which I’d probably be able to be discharged.

And then still I would have to wait up to five days for the results, all the while wondering what the future held, or didn’t, for me.