I am not an uneducated patient, not by a long shot. I’ve spent months at the prestigious Johns Hopkins Medical Center in Baltimore caring for an ill father, and before him at the same institution, an adored father-in-law with pancreatic cancer, and years, if not decades before those crises, in and out of hospitals with health issues of other family members and friends. I worked for a national cancer advocacy group where my job was to walk patients through their own journeys to find experts, to get needed tests and to help explain results to them. I worked with many clinicians at Hopkins, the National Institutes of Health, and other tertiary hospitals in the country in a professional capacity. In other words, I have connections and I know whom to call to get some answers if I need them. I know when to challenge my healthcare professionals and when to stand back and let them do their work.

And, yet.

Continue reading “So, for the last 72 hours, I was pretty sure I had cancer.” →