There are better times to have a CT scan than the Monday after Thanksgiving. Turkey does not taste nearly as succulent when the question Exactly how bad is this cancer? hangs over one’s head. (Fortunately, that question hardly diminished the utter deliciousness of chocolate chess pie.) The entire weekend was a dark night of the soul until I heard this little voice: You simply cannot leave. Not yet. With that, I called off plans for my personal Farewell Tour — an epic road trip filled with visits to all my friends and family — and returned to the serious business of my life.

Chris and I arrived for the CT scan on Monday afternoon, just in time for a battle royale with our insurance company. There is nothing that lessens a cancer patient’s anxiety about a terrifying test more than the notion that despite staggering insurance premiums, one will have to pay for that test in full. I delegated that job to Chris, who had by that time turned the color of one of my delicious barium smoothies, and double-bagged myself in two hospital gowns so as not to give the boys a show.

The barium smoothie was not the only fun, for I found myself shot up with a contrast dye that turned my body hot and made me feel like I’d just wet my pants. (Fortunately, the nurse warned me of those effects.) A moving tray took me in and out of the machine; it whirred and clicked, and a cartoon graphic of a child blowing bubbles would say, HOLD YOUR BREATH. 3-2-1. NOW BREATHE.

So for four minutes, I rode the world’s lamest and most stressful amusement ride, but I walked out with a CD of my guts as a souvenir.

Here is a pro tip: Leave the interpretation of that CD to the professionals. Google and your English degree are absolutely useless.

I cried for the first time during this entire ordeal when I received the diagnosis: My liver, lymph nodes, and bones are clear. I caught it early. Very early. And with that news, I sobbed like a baby for 10 solid minutes.

I found a surgeon I love, and she canceled a meeting on December 10 to do my surgery. I will spend four days in the hospital and the rest of December knitting on my couch. Do not be surprised if you receive something soft and lumpy in the mail, just from me.

It will be a wonderful Christmas. Sure, I have cancer. But it could have been a whole lot worse.

I have been grateful to everyone who has read about my experience. Writing has helped me to gather my thoughts, and except for the anxiety-laden wait for the CT scan, remain calm. It has also helped in social settings: At a party last night, almost everyone knew, which made it easy to collect a hug and move on to talking about the more important business of life, like children, books, terrific-looking shoes, creative endeavors, and contemplating the pleasure of a really good grilled cheese sandwich. You know, the things that keep you going.

There was one woman who did not know and who got lost in a conversation until I said, “I have colon cancer.” If you have ever had cancer or been really sick, you know the face that she gave me: a look of horror in her eyes, a slack jaw, instant concern. This is understandable — I have given this same face in the past — so I decided to try something new. I said, Don’t look at me like that! It’s not like I’m dying of syphilis or something.

And she laughed. It was a beautiful sound.

Maybe here is what you say instead. I have a friend who has colon cancer, and she’s doing just fine. I hope you will, too. Or I really hate to hear that, but those are some incredible shoes. Or I love you so much, and I will do anything you need. Like, do you need me to get more of those dark chocolate almonds for you right now? Or I will keep you in my prayers, my dear friend.

Rest assured that there are no right things to say, no magic words. Although I am not a fan of the word “brave” — it conjures for me both a little toaster and rushing futilely into battle — I could hear the compassion and fear behind even that word selection, and everything was okay. But mostly I encourage you to say something, even if you feel like a fumbling idiot. If you get in a pinch, you can just ask me.

And me? I owe a tremendous debt to everyone who has said prayers, sent letters, typed texts, emailed, left gifts on my door step, offered to walk Emmet, and hugged me tightly. Cancer and serious illness survival stories have come out of the woodwork, proffered honestly and often with the email address of someone I could contact. My surgeon asked if I was getting good support from my friends and family, and I told her that everyone was making me feel like Ferris Bueller in the downtown Chicago parade. Thank you all. I will pay it forward.

And now I need to get to the work in front of me, the solving of other people’s problems before a physician solves my own. I leave you with this benediction, a quote from Henri-Frederic Amiel (for those of you keeping score):

Life is short. We don’t have much time to gladden the hearts of those who walk this way with us. So be quick to love, and make haste to be kind.

Life carries a death sentence, cancer diagnosis or not. Live it, friends, and live it well.

ALC

After I finished cross-examining a witness during a hearing a few years ago, I sat down next to my client, who leaned over and whispered, If you had a tail, it would be wagging right about now. I am naturally nosy, and without my good southern upbringing, I would be a dogged questioner in all sorts of inappropriate situations.

There are limits. I would not, for instance, subject a cancer patient to a sifting and thorough cross-examination. But cancer is a great curiosity, and other than a friend of mine who has survived breast cancer, I have never known a cancer patient my age or younger. The problem is that I have a lot of questions. Fortunately, I am willing to ask and answer them.

In your earlier blog post, you said you had had a gut feeling that something was wrong. Could you elaborate on why you felt that way?

Before I answer, I would like to offer an explanation.  Colon cancer is not a natural fit for me. I am the type of person who tries to hide the toilet paper package under things at the grocery store lest anyone gets the wrong idea — i.e., that I have bodily functions. Sure, I find humor is some things, like the fact that the color of colon cancer awareness is royal blue and not brown. I am a Cancer, meaning I feel like I was born under a bad sign. I ponder about why the all-powerful smoothie industry has not put its foot down about the use of its name on barium sulfate oral suspensions.

Mostly I wonder why my symptoms were so subtle. The first sign that something was amiss occurred  when I suddenly had the intestinal stylings of an eight year-old boy who subsisted entirely on beans. For a few weeks in June, it was full-on Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture — complete with cannons.

Then it stopped.

I had what doctors call a change in bowel habits, and once in July, I had abdominal pain so severe that it almost doubled me over. I thought about a trip to the ER, but elected instead to walk into work. I felt better, or at least better enough. But it was so memorable that when I saw my family physician a few weeks laterand she asked if I had had any stomach pain, I mentioned it. She thought at first that I had an ovarian cyst or (as she put it) something else that was a whole lot worse.

I am reminded here of a college intern at my old job. I asked her one day what she hoped to do after college, and she told me that she wanted to be one of two things: either a nurse or something else.

“Something else” covers a whole lot of waterfront — whether employment or health-wise — and when the first round of testing came back negative, my doctor referred me in early September for a colonoscopy, which was scheduled for November 15.

These were not great clues — I would have preferred something dramatic, like a giant flashing neon arrow pointed at my sigmoid colon that said “CANCER” — but they were enough for someone raised on a steady diet of Nancy Drew.

Exactly how bad was the colonoscopy?

The prep was the worst, but even it was not terrible: a few hours of diarrhea over two sessions on an empty stomach. The procedure itself was nothing.

Before you put yours off again, remember this: It is a once in every 10 year affair. If you have colon cancer, it becomes an annual affair.

I say this in all sincerity. I hope to have dozens more colonoscopies in my lifetime.

I know this sounds weird, but did you do anything to prepare yourself for having cancer?

I have seen movies with a quick montage of everything leading to a particular moment. My favorite is from “Bridget Jones’s Diary,” where you see Bridge walking along outside, falling off a spin bike, and generally preparing herself for a new life, all to the tune of Chaka Khan’s “I’m Every Woman.”

My personal montage begins a decade ago, for that is about how long it takes for a polyp in the bowel to evolve into full-blown cancer. Ten years ago, the diagnosis alone would have killed me. Seriously — I could not have handled it.

About a decade ago, I began to get the inkling that my life was not where I wanted it to be. It really bottomed out around age 45. As the polyp transmogrified silently inside me,  I started working hard on myself. I have tried to be grateful in all things. I have built strong friendships and a family life that leaves me so thankful that I tear up when thinking about it. Fully loaded with too much gear, I hiked 87 1/2 miles on the Appalachian Trail over a five-day period with my then 16 year-old son. I started writing. I learned to knit. I got a puppy.

Sure, I stand here with a cancer diagnosis. But I have a quiver filled with these arrows: a certain emotional resolve and comfort with myself, the support that comes from loving friends and family, the strength that comes from an overwhelming physical ordeal, the ability to write my own story, a hobby that will keep me occupied when I am bedridden, a source of love and comfort that I would have never gotten if I had known then that I had cancer.

I have these things.

And about three or four years ago, Chris and I heard about — and started — a  Health Savings Account, a medical savings account (complete with tax advantages) available to people who are enrolled in high-deductible healthcare plans. I have no idea whether you are eligible, but I mention this here to prompt you to look into it. It offers some financial peace of mind in case catastrophe strikes. Chris and I thought we were saving for a rainy day, not a Category 5 hurricane where Jim Cantore and The Weather Channel van had just arrived.

Speaking of weather metaphors, is there another one you’d like to use?

Well, yes.

The most surprising thing about the diagnosis is that I have felt like the calm in the eye of the storm. Everything else, and everyone else, has been swirling about me, yet I remain myself, solid and (so far) unchanged.

That’s great and all, but have you gotten angry?

I think anyone who knows me knows this about me: I take genuine pride in my health. I eat right. I walk five miles a day, every day. I lift weights. I do Pilates. I even tried — grudgingly, as it turned out — to practice yoga (and “grudgingly” is no way to practice yoga, I assure you). I take no prescription medication. When I went for my colonoscopy, my blood pressure was 105/58.

And this is the body that betrayed me.

There came a point that I dreamed of sitting down with a fifth of bourbon and an entire box of Oatmeal Creme Pies and just going for it — you know, embracing the drunken, sugar-addled mess that undoubtedly lurks inside.

Tempting, but no.

I told myself that while my good health did not prevent colon cancer, it has to carry me to the other side of it. As long as I am able, I will be walking, lifting, doing Pilates, and eating right.

I walked six miles the evening of my colonoscopy to process the diagnosis.

At the gym, I have embraced the battle ropes — long, heavy ropes looped around a metal pole that you have to manipulate up and down, either separately or jointly. It sounds easy, but it is hard. (I like to think that the ropes go thwap thwap thwap thwap at this speed when they hit the ground, but at my current speed, it’s probably like thwap      thwap      thwap      thwap.)

I have also been doing a lot of ab work, telling myself that the surgeon will need the daVinci robot to penetrate these abs of steel. This is a lie that keeps me going.

This is not a lie: I feel like I am gearing up for a fight.

But I got genuinely mad on Friday night, when intense stomach pain made me realize that I would have to give up my tickets to the Georgia-Georgia Tech game and go home. It was the right decision, but it still stunk.

Wait. You’re in pain?

Yes.

But would you rather throw in a college football story?

Yes.

I am reminded these days of Malcolm Mitchell, a receiver for the University of Georgia. While celebrating a Todd Gurley’s touchdown run against Clemson in 2013, Mitchell jumped up, landed, and tore his ACL. Among my football watching group, he is known exclusively as The Fragile Flower.

Malcolm Mitchell’s celebration style changed after the injury. No more jumping. And I think of Malcolm Mitchell every time I see a smaller, faster Georgia offensive player lifted into the air, Titanic-style with arms thrown wide, by a bigger, stronger player while celebrating in the end zone.

I feel like a bit like The Fragile Flower right now, what with my reliance on my deep bench of far stronger people.

Has your life been occupied by cancer thoughts for the last 11 days?

Wouldn’t yours be?

But funny things still happen.

On Black Friday, Chris and I went ottoman shopping. Our son took our ottoman when he moved into his apartment, which all of his friends praise for its — and I quote —  “retro-90s sensibility.” (I note here that this is a sensibility sprung from the last time we had disposable income to buy furniture — the mid-1990s, just before our children arrived.)

It was a triumphant day for me, for I won the Battle of Two Ottomans. Chris had urged for a single ottoman; I countered that one is simply not enough. It may have been the cancer. It may have been his fatigue. It may have been the inevitability of his defeat. For whatever reason: I won.

Having won, I was left to pay. I spoke to Brandon at the register, and Brandon asked me to speak again. I did. Whereupon he replied, Where are you from?

Y’all, he thought I was British. I told him Moultrie is a really classy place.

And our living room has never been more comfortable.

Small victories, friends. Take them where you can find them.

ALC

We all discover things we wish we had not: bad yet addictive TV, the deliciousness of peanut butter straight from the jar, the 24 hour comfort of yoga pants. Yesterday, I discovered something I wish had not had to discover: just how hard it is to tell people that I have cancer.

It has been a difficult 27 hours.

It has been hard to call, text, or visit people you love who are having a perfectly normal (and perhaps even good) day and drop this bomb. There are no neat conversational segues, no ways to work it into a discussion of the weather, no ability to make an off-handed mention that I have colon cancer.  And every time that I tell someone, it hurts them and it hurts me, for the fact that I have cancer becomes more real.

But I do. And it is.

After a lifetime of caring for this body, I had known for a few months that something was wrong, although I had no idea what it was. I found myself approaching yesterday’s colonoscopy with more fear and dread that I have approached almost anything else. It wasn’t just the bowel prep or 36 hours without food, although both were dreadful. It certainly wasn’t the physician, who is appropriately named Dr. Nyce. It was just this feeling that something wasn’t right, a fear not emanating from countless consultations with Dr. Google, but from something innate and nagging, something insistent inside.

It was, appropriately enough, a gut feeling.

If you have not had a colonoscopy, your physician will recommend one when you turn 50. That is why I was there. There is that hideous bowel prep offset by an absolutely lovely sedation — the most refreshing nap you’ve ever taken, said the anesthesiologist. (She was right.) As I waited for the refreshing nap portion of the program, I told Dr. Nyce through tears that my 19 year-old daughter was the person waiting to take me home. If there is something wrong, do not tell her. Call Chris, I said, and he will come. When I woke up, Dr. Nyce walked in, followed by Chris.

It has been the first time I have ever seen Chris and felt my heart fall. When Dr. Nyce told me I had colon cancer, I made a joke about how disappointed I was that my symptoms did not include unexplained weight loss. No one laughed. I asked if I would be able to play the violin after treatment. Again no one laughed.

Tough crowd.

On the bright side, cancer gives you the golden ticket to the medical profession. I have Dr. Nyce’s cell phone number. A surgeon worked me in to his schedule yesterday afternoon. A radiology oncologist, a friend of a friend, called me out of the blue. I will have a CT scan in the next few days to tell me if the cancer is localized or if it has spread. Unless someone has a better idea, I will have resection surgery the second or third week in December.

Resection surgery sounds a lot like plumbing: The surgeon removes the defective piece of pipe — in this case, part of my colon and surrounding lymph nodes — and joins the healthy ends. I have caught my first break, for the cancer is located in a spot that is easily reached and (as the surgeon put it) half a mile from the really tricky stuff. The surgery will be performed via robot, although the surgeon will open me up if he needs to. I will spend four or five days in the hospital to recover. If I caught the cancer early, the resection may be enough. I may not need chemotherapy or radiation.

I will have a brand new semicolon, just in time for Christmas. Chris and I have plans to board a flight to London on January 21, and even if Chris has to place my bag in the overhead bin for me, I intend to be on that plane. Years of practicing a fake British accent are not going to waste. Not on my watch, governor.

I have not cried about the diagnosis yet, although I came perilously close in a phone call this morning to my friend Tanner. He told me to stop — just stop! —  for I had more intestinal fortitude than anyone he knew, and that if anyone could survive without a portion of her intestines, it would be me. This was the greatest reply ever.

When we hung up, I went on Amazon and had a custom T-shirt made, in red with pink lettering. On the front it says: INTESTINAL FORTITUDE. On the back it says: THIS IS GOING TO TAKE GUTS.

I plan to wear it to every appointment.

I think anyone reared on a steady diet of Road Runner cartoons knows how perilous it all is. One false move, one wrong corner, and the ACME anvil comes flying right down. Until the CT scan, I do not know exactly what I am facing. But does it really matter? Early or late detection, good or bad survival odds, my strategy is the same: I intend to keep living my life like there’s no tomorrow. I will wear my stupid shirt, talk about my semicolon, and make terrible jokes. I will love my family and friends whole-heartedly. I will wear bright clothes. I will raise a puppy. I will write and knit and paint and read books and garden and travel. I will come into work. I will not take it all for granted.

But enough about me. Let’s talk about you, and what you can do for me. I will have time in the hospital, followed by time on my couch. Come see me, text me, email me. Send me a card. Offer to walk my dog. Check in on Chris and my children, for they have the harder role. Shower me with kindness. Treat me normally in a most abnormal situation. I am not worried, so do not worry for me.

And for heaven’s sake, get that routine colonoscopy.  I have no family history of cancer, and I have none of the risk factors for colon cancer. I am not overweight. I do not smoke. I am physically active. I eat well. I do not drink heavily. The only why I can see is that some cell deep in my bowels decided to do its own little dance. Since there’s no real why, I have had to focus on another question:  where to go from here.  Always forward, my friends. Always forward.

ALC

Thirty-three years ago this Monday, when I was 17, I met Chris in a college cafeteria in Athens, Georgia. I was with my roommate, and he was with someone I knew, and as I sat down across from him, I knew that I would marry him some day. He says now — diplomatically, perhaps — that he knew that, too, but at the time it felt like the first bit of fine advocacy that would eventually land me in law school. Perhaps Lyle Lovett said it best (as he often does):

We have been married for 26 years now, and with our graying hair and the lines that make us look terribly interesting, we have reached the point where that fact is readily apparent. From time to time, as happened today at lunch, young women approach Chris and me to tell us that we look very cute together. This is a lovely sentiment, to be sure, and I take it in the intended spirit, but it sometimes has the effect of making me feel like the two of us are about to board the bus back to the old folks’ home. These are not dentures! I want to say. These are not orthopedic shoes!

From years of observation, I think that this much is true. Every successful relationship can be described by the title of an album by the DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince — He’s the DJ, I’m the Rapper — for someone has to talk, and someone has to not talk. It should come as no surprise that I am the one who talks. So today at lunch, in full-on rapper capacity, I smiled at the young woman and thanked her profusely. He is my favorite accessory, I said. And that is true, too.

Chris is a mystery to me in many ways, as I am to him, and as it should be. But the one thing that I cannot quite understand is that I am married to someone who is not a dog person. This baffles me even more than the fact that I am married to someone who does not even like college football. In addition to an undeniably keen fashion sense, Chris’ family had Zoey, a childhood dog.

But mostly Chris’ family had cats. Cats, I say! There was Thurston, the one-eyed tom cat, and Molly, a sweet gray tabby who met an untimely end at the mouth of a neighborhood dog. And then there was Anastasia, the replacement cat for Molly. Anastasia was a beautiful, inbred, cross-eyed Persian who would always — always — take a dump in my open suitcase whenever I visited Chris’ family during college. Was she an emissary of my future mother-in-law, a feline messenger cautioning me to get my meat hooks out of the family’s firstborn? I do not know. But I do know that if I left the guest room door open for even 90 seconds, a surprise awaited.

Just as many waters cannot quench love, a vengeful cretin of a cat cannot stop the inevitable: Chris married a dog person, and I married someone who was not a dog person. This was its own brand of mischief, for I unilaterally decided after a mixed doubles tennis match on an incredibly hot day in 1996 to (and I quote here) swing by Petsmart and just look at the dog adoption. There have been few greater lies ever told, that whole “just look” thing, and I walked out with Harris, an eight week-old golden retriever mix. Nineteen days after Harris died, I fell in love with a photograph of Buddy, and two weeks later, I hauled him home on an incredibly cold day in 2008 in the back of my station wagon. Buddy died in June. And I have been bereft.

It has been a hard five months. My dog died. The children have both left home. An injury has forced me to quit teaching fitness classes. An eight year construction project has happily, but exhaustingly, come to an end. There is an illness to be managed.

And there was a quiet conversation with Chris, who asked that we not get another dog. He is not a dog person because he is allergic to dogs. i think I knew this. I think I ignored this. For 22 straight years,

So I agreed. After 22 years, he is entitled.

I am not sure that I have been depressed for the last five months, but I have certainly been sad. I have had difficulty writing. I have had difficulty painting. Both require me to muster a certain amount of joy.

I have not had difficulty in paring down my possessions. In a podcast I heard shortly after Buddy died, a professional organizer talked about the emotional value we place on our things: We have difficulty letting go of some things because we want to be that person again, or because that time in our lives has passed. She gave the example of a stay-at-home mother who used to be an attorney; the woman could not bear to throw out her work suits — suits that she no longer wore that would probably be out of fashion if she ever returned to work.

So with all of this time on my hands, I started to fill boxes with things that deserved a fond, or even an indifferent, farewell. I am on friendly terms with the Goodwill man, who remains amused by my accent. (Even though I live in southeast Georgia, he can tell that I’m not from around here.) I have started stocking a free little library in a rough part of town. I have dropped off bags of beloved clothing and shoes at a thrift store an hour and one-half away, whenever court takes me to Brunswick. I have donated yarn and fabric to the performing arts high school. I am not a minimalist, not by any means, but it has made me feel far more sane. If you ask yourself often enough, What have been holding onto that I can’t let go?, you get some answers after a while.

During all of this industry, there was another quiet conversation with Chris. There are hypoallergenic dogs, he said. I hate to see you so sad. He may not be a dog person. But he is definitely an Amy Lee person.

Nine days ago, with Chris’ blessing, I drove a few hours and came home with Emmet, a green-eyed chocolate colored standard poodle. As with all great relationships, it began with a connection. I had actually come for Emmet’s littermate, an obnoxiously good-looking buff blond who was a dead ringer for a Golden Retriever with a perm. The meeting went as many of my plans go, for that dog ignored me. While I sat cross-legged on the floor, Emmet walked over to me, placed his forelegs on my left thigh, and stared into my own green eyes with the depth reserved for a great love. Emmet is hard at times — why is there no professional sports team called “The Teething Puppies,” for is that tenacity and intensity ever equaled? — and he is unlike any other dog I have ever had, more of a DJ than a rapper.

But I am grateful to have a dog in my life again. There are things to be written, and explosions of color to be painted, and if I am incredibly lucky one day, orthopedic shoes and an old folks’ home. It is nice to feel happy again, and it is good to be loved.

ALC

P.S. — Here is a picture of Emmet, taken by the breeder the day before we met.