The Lump
I found a lump the other day. There are better things for which you want to see your physician. Telling her this particular bit of news is not one of them.
Things had been going well for the past eleven years and I put my previous problems out of my mind until I happened to be feeling around during a dull moment in my radio show and hit it.
The studio seemed to get awfully cold for a moment. As I continued reading the news, I also thought of things that I’d have to do. Cancel my September 2008 cruise, get my room cleaned up, get my railroad videos to the college’s reference librarian so her son can add them to his collection, etc. Tell the family, tell the close friends, wrap things up.
As it turned out, things seem to be ok. “No problem” is the word from radiology; “seems to be” is the phrase from me. It’s not that I don’t trust the experts with the machines; it’s just that they can miss things and, like the captain of his ship, I am the one ultimately responsible for keeping an eye on my health.
Short of getting paranoid every time I get some passing little twinge, I’m keeping an eye on things. The stats for my life expectancy when I was born came out to be 66 years, or one year older than I am now; but these days, having reached this age, those same stats tell me I’m good for another 17 years. Just look both ways before crossing, and check that lump.
Things had been going well for the past eleven years and I put my previous problems out of my mind until I happened to be feeling around during a dull moment in my radio show and hit it.
The studio seemed to get awfully cold for a moment. As I continued reading the news, I also thought of things that I’d have to do. Cancel my September 2008 cruise, get my room cleaned up, get my railroad videos to the college’s reference librarian so her son can add them to his collection, etc. Tell the family, tell the close friends, wrap things up.
As it turned out, things seem to be ok. “No problem” is the word from radiology; “seems to be” is the phrase from me. It’s not that I don’t trust the experts with the machines; it’s just that they can miss things and, like the captain of his ship, I am the one ultimately responsible for keeping an eye on my health.
Short of getting paranoid every time I get some passing little twinge, I’m keeping an eye on things. The stats for my life expectancy when I was born came out to be 66 years, or one year older than I am now; but these days, having reached this age, those same stats tell me I’m good for another 17 years. Just look both ways before crossing, and check that lump.
posted by Tom Carten at 11:54 PM
2 Comments:
Carten, you weren't giving yourself a testicular self-examination while on the air, were you?
Nuts to that. (bad joke) Try breast cancer.
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