A wave of worry has been building for a little over a week now. About a month ago, I had an ultrasound for a fairly routine, non-worrisome reason. I was even joking with the technician that this was my favorite ultrasound ever because my others – all fertility and pregnancy (or miscarriage) related – were so nerve-wracking and sometimes devastating. But this one was cake. It gave me an hour of solitude and it was all just part of a non-urgent workup my doctor was doing. Bliss.

But then, in my follow up appointment, I learned that something had been detected in my left kidney. A mass. A solid. Something that wasn’t supposed to be there was, in fact, there. They tell you these things rather matter-of-factly and even a bit nonchalantly, like, “you can hang your coat on that hook and you have a mass on your kidney, btw”. I don’t think I reacted much, matching my doctor’s coolness. She talked about me needing a CT scan so they could determine if it’s truly a mass or if it could be scarring. Another day at the office for her, but this was a first for me. I think I nodded, looked at some pamphlets, agreed to get a CT scan, and walked home kind of in a haze.

It wasn’t until I got home and read the ultrasound report that I began to feel very un-cool about all this.

“Findings concerning for possible renal mass”

I started googling “renal mass” and quickly learned that 80% of renal masses are malignant, aka cancer. And then words like “metastasize” and “life span” and “chemo” and “surgery” flooded my eyes and brain. And with that, all of the trauma and pain and worry from my dad’s cancer journey came screaming back, except this time for me, so really, for my kids.

Once you’ve been on a cancer journey with a loved one and lost said loved one, cancer fear is just seared into your DNA. Headache? Must be brain cancer. Persistent cough? Probably lung cancer. Paper cut? Paper cut cancer. It’s this ever present fear that it’ll strike me (or a loved one) next.

So when I learned about my potential mass, my mind went right to kidney cancer. And then it went where my dad’s journey went: stage 4 metastatic cancer > every intervention under the sun > death. So I put that scenario in the context of my own life as a mother to two young children and the possibility of it all just broke me wide open. I can deal with my own fate, my own mortality, but the thought of leaving my kids in my wake? That was simply too much to bear.

But during these days of waiting and wondering and worrying, that fear dominated my mind. I mean, we as humans live with the possibility of dying every day just by existing on this wild spinning orb, but like so much else, we take our lives for granted and just automatically expect a series of tomorrows. I automatically expect to be here every day to raise my babies. This was the first time that expectation had been been interrupted, challenged. I tried to not give those fearful thoughts too much energy, but, you know how it goes: you give fear an inch and it takes a foot.

So I spent these past nine days cycling through a wide range of possible outcomes of this potential mass on my kidney, which I was blissfully unaware of just a few days prior. Sometimes, ignorance really is bliss. I tried my best to stay present and grounded in the facts, which were that:

• I was not a likely candidate for this type of cancer, and
• Scarring can occur from infection, which I’ve had

The odds were in my favor, but still, I could not escape the possibility of a much worse outcome. It haunted me all week. I was shook.

Yesterday, after nine torturously long days of waiting, my phone finally rang, my fate on the other line. I was in Costco, in the shampoo aisle, of all places. (Of course I was in Costco. Why does so much of my life happen at Costco?). I answered my phone, grabbed Jay’s hand, and leaned into a post, bracing myself.

“Hi Jennifer, your CT scan results showed some scarring and a small stone, no renal mass”

SCARRING! SCAR TISSUE!

I repeated the words back to my doctor’s assistant (“so it’s not a mass? NOT A MASS, just scarring, right? And a stone. Not a mass”), exhaled all the stress of the week, and sobbed tears of relief and gratitude. At Costco. Thank you, God.

Now that I’m on the other side of this health scare, I am thankful for it. Nothing crystalizes what’s most important in life than a health scare. Nothing shakes us alive again like the threat of illness, or death. So here I sit, freshly shaken and woke from nine days on the edge of an almost crisis, full of gratitude and zest and a fresh perspective on my life.

So just in case you need the reminder, or want the benefits of being shook without the scare, here’s what I re-learned in the process: our time here is fleeting and nothing is a given. It can all change or go away so quickly. Don’t take your life or the people in it for granted. Spend your time wisely. The currency of time is more valuable than the currency of money. Take care of your health and be grateful for all that your body allows you to do. Each day comes to us filled with possibility and opportunity. You get to choose how to live your life and what thoughts to hold in your mind. What a gift. Truly.

I’ll end by sharing a poem by Mary Oliver, whose words always resonate with and haunt me in the best ways, particularly now. Thanks for reading.

The Summer Day

 Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

~ Mary Oliver