Happy Birthday...Like your present?

There's a line in the movie The Mothman Prophecies where Richard Gere's character, finding out that his wife (Debra Messing) has an inoperable and terminal brain tumor, states: "It was like the universe opens up and points at you and says "AHH! There you are! The happy couple--I've been looking for you! "

Bearing that in mind--

Friends, allow me to introduce you to my new companion, Igor. More of a squatter, really--I know that I didn't invite him in. He lives down in the basement.

Ugly little spud--sort of the mating of a mutant oyster and rancid pile of gristle.

Igor, be nice and say hello.

yeearghsplxxx!

You'll have to forgive Igor; he lacks what we sophisticated types (you know, beings with oppositional thumbs and whatnot) call "the social skills." You can't really expect that much from him--his basic goals in life are eating, growing, spreading out, and killing off his host; that doesn't exactly make him a candidate for the Blaine School of Charm and Poise.

In case you haven't figured it out by now, Igor is the name I've given the melanoma that was found in my sigmoid colon on Friday. It's large enough that they cannot get a sigmoidoscope past it to check the rest of my colon, it appears to be malignant (they won't know for certain until the biopsy results come back on Wednesday), and it's ulcerated (which is why they were checking me out in the first place).

I have cancer. The Big C.

I have to say that I've been handling it rather well; I managed to get about ten feet from the Endoscopy unit before I had my moment of panic, terror and shame. Since then, I've been pretty calm about it--it almost feels like the time I was in a car accident ('04, I think) and the car I was driving was spun 180 degrees by the impact: you have this strange, disjointed sensation of floating where everything is still, like the world itself is holding its breath.

Of course, my family has been incredibly supportive, which has cushioned the blow considerably. The real test comes tomorrow, when I have to tell my co-workers that I go under the knife in 2-3 weeks, and will be absent for about 4-6 weeks afterward. Following that will be a course of chemotherapy and radiation treatments, with the attendant negative effects.

The irony? Tomorrow is my fortieth birthday. One hell of a birthday present, isn't it?

So it goes.