Messages

I sat down at my computer this morning and one of the messages that popped up was an RIP for someone I went to high school with- I was friends with her husband back then, when we were kids, too. She died of breast cancer.

When I saw the message thread I was thrown back into a dream that I had this morning that I'd forgotten as soon as my eyes opened.

I'm laying on an exam table having a physical from my warm, kind, connected physician. There is intimacy between us, we are on a first name basis, she is practical and honest and direct. She's palpating the lymph nodes in my groin, and hard. It hurts how much she's pressing down but I just breathe into my belly and wait for it to be over because I trust her and know she's looking thoroughly.

She pauses.

"There's a node, right there." She presses on it. I can't feel it but in my mind I can imagine the hard marble under her finger tips, being worked back and forth as she palpates it.

I feel myself pop out of my body. In my head, I say, "FUCK." Out loud, I say, "Great." And I smile.

She keeps pressing down and my brain goes to where we're going next... needle aspiration, will that be painful? How much pain medication can I get? She interrupts my thoughts -

"There's another one."

Now I say it out loud. "FUCK." She's looking at me knowing that I know what this probably means, given my 'cancer history', she's looking at me with love in her heart and a physician's planning mind- what tests do we run, what treatment would we consider- and I lay on the table focused on the two little invaders that will completely shift my life, again.

Then I woke up, rested and relishing in a long night's sleep, and forgot the entire dream.