"The Journey............."

Two years ago, the Muslim doctor who has been giving me minor physicals for the last decade at a nearby Veterans outpost discovered a three-point jump in something my blood sample reveals to him and suddenly it seemed urgent to him for me to have a biopsy performed. I would cancel the first one scheduled, reasoning that, by Ahmad’s own admission, if recent medication might be responsible for the surge, surely a second examination of the evidence was but common sense before going “under the knife”. No outcry from anyone after a re-take led to my annual check-up twelve months later showing yet another minor rise above the first and, this time, the staff at the hospital, themselves, after telling me it was possible to “put one under” for the twenty minutes or so, negated my appointment when I requested that option. It would be six weeks before we could meet to discuss the benefit of not resorting to anesthesia and my agreement to bypass sit led to a date in June that didn’t require me missing school. My right index finger needing nine stitches to repair an encounter with a splintered, bamboo-like flower stalk brings us to yesterday’s visit, the final climax to this story. No aspirin for at least ten days prior meant no relief for the headaches that come with my sinuses. Standing on your head trying to give yourself an enema is something I wish on no one. One strawberry pop-tart washed down with a cup of coffee was my only intake until about two o’clock; and my oldest daughter rode with us, Beth not all that anxious to tackle the expressway traffic in Cincinnati. There forty minutes early for an eleven-thirty kick-off, we sat in the waiting room until nearly one. Voila! Finally escorted back to a small room and met by two doctors waiting to get my consent on a dotted line, I listened to the older fellow tell me just what about to happen; and when he noted that negative results would mean “no more surgery”, I told him that positive results would bring the same conclusion to all this. “What!” he exclaimed; “Then why do it?” Explaining the initial call for urgency and pointing to my family’s fear about what the future might hold, suddenly I hear an educated physician tell me that, at my age, having this procedure could possibly do me more harm than just taking the risk that cancer was present. He marveled that anyone prodded me in this direction in the first place. My count was not all that high to warrant it right now and there was medication available to deal with problems otherwise. My wife was brought in to hear the same speech, me wanting her to hear it right from “the horse’s mouth”, so to speak. End of saga. I sit here shaking my head and thanking God for peace in the middle of a world gone nuts. Give me prayer and His anchor-line in the next step. All else is a shot in the dark…….