Well, this time it certainly wasn't paranoia. But then how many of the previous times weren't either -- perhaps Jackie's body was able to fight them off. If it had been me they were checking they would have said "keep an eye on it and come back in 6 months." But it wasn't me -- it was someone with a history of cancer, and the doctors suspected the worst. As a matter of fact, Jackie's oncologist had been very upset with her the previous month, because we had been talking about the possibility of having the child we had been talking about when this all started. Jackie's thought at the time had been "Two years and I'm OK, maybe now is the time." The doctor wasn't thrilled, but he didn't have any real reason not to go ahead, and we talked about it and thought we might go through with it in the following months. Unfortunately, it was not to be.

Jackie wanted this "thing" out of her, so we scheduled an outpatient surgery. Medicine was advancing -- we went to a surgi-center instead of the hospital. You're in and out more quickly and there's not as much red tape as at the hospital.

We went in for a 1:00 surgery. When they took Jackie back I asked the surgeon if I could see the node after he got it out.

I wanted to see it because I wanted to know what was going on as soon as I could, and that seemed like the fastest way. He said sure, he'd show me in 30 to 45 minutes.

Unfortunately, my stomach betrayed me, and he was quick. I walked across the street to get a drink and a bag of chips. I was gone 20 minutes, so I missed seeing the node. Actually, I thought it was taking a long time, but Jackie was just the type of person who took forever to wake up from anesthesia (I kept peeking into the recovery room whenever I could find them). At last, out came Jackie and the surgeon -- "Good news I think" he said, "The node was full of necrosis (dead stuff), I didn't see a tumor."

Relief -- good news -- off we went to the mountains for the weekend feeling pretty good.