I move up my appointment with my colorectal oncologist, Dr. Cannon, because the pathology results came in sooner than expected. I’m nine days post-op from a lower anterior resection, a surgery in which most of my rectum was removed—along with a stage three tumor and 37 lymph nodes. We meet virtually. 

We’ve never met virtually before. 

I was lying in a hospital bed when the results came in. We had just changed my pain meds. I wasn’t entirely sure what was going on. I thought I understood the results, but I pasted them into ChatGPT on my phone to be sure. 

ChatGPT is not my oncologist. 

I’m sitting cross-legged on my couch when Dr. Cannon logs on. There is something strangely intimate about one of your doctors seeing your living room. I’m a little uncomfortable. A bit nervous.

“I like your art, Allison,” he says. “What it says there.”

I look at myself on the screen and at the print that’s hanging on the wall behind my right shoulder.

“What’s the best that could happen?” it says.

“Thank you,” I respond.

I ordered the print from Art.com the month after I moved into the townhouse where I now sit. I moved here after the lease was up on the townhouse my husband and I had been renting after we sold our house. A “fresh start.”

I didn’t know what “fresh start” was going to come to mean.

I paid extra to have the print matted and framed. 

I ordered the print two days after I tried to end something that was rapidly escalating with a married friend who had confessed to having feelings for me.

I didn’t know what to do. I wanted him, bad.

So I panicked, cut it off, and went on Art.com. 

What’s the best that could happen?

I’ve always been anxious about hanging things on my walls. I want to get the placement just right.

After much deliberation, I decided to hang it next to my TV. That way I’d see it when I sat on my couch. I’d see it in my peripheral vision when I watched TV. I’d see it pretty much all the time; my new living space is small.

Dr. Cannon and I go over the pathology report line by line.

“This is excellent,” he tells me. “Usually I have a report come back with at least one thing. One lymph node, vascular invasion, an unclear margin, something. But yours had nothing. It’s better than expected.”

“But what about that one part?” I ask. “The part where it says the cancer didn’t respond to chemotherapy?”

I had asked my surgeon the same question that day in the hospital, when the results came in sooner than expected.

“Did you see your pathology report?” she exclaimed when she walked into the room with her surgical resident. 

“Yes,” I replied.

“Aren’t you happy?” she asked.

“Yes…” I replied cautiously. “But what about that part where it says the cancer didn’t respond to chemotherapy?”

She furrows her brow and walks over to the computer. She logs in and pulls up the report. “Huh,” she says. “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask Dr. Cannon.”

She walks to my bedside and gently pulls up my hospital gown to check the incisions from my surgery. They’re looking good.

“Usually,” she tells her resident, “we get about 12 lymph nodes out. We got 37. And all negative. Great news.”

The best that could happen.

I took a nail—the special picture-hanging kind—and hammered it into the wall next to my TV. I picked up the print and gently hung it there. I stepped back and admired the placement. 

What’s the best that could happen?

It stayed there, hung, in my peripheral vision when I sat at my table on Zoom with a judge, a lawyer, and my husband as our divorce was finalized by the state—less than six months after my husband said, on a different Zoom call, “I want a divorce.”

What’s the best that could happen?

It stayed there, hung, when he blocked me from all social media and never spoke to me again. 

What’s the best that could happen?

It stayed there, hung, as my friend showed up in my doorway, picked me up, and carried me to my couch. He sat with my legs wrapped around him, my hair hanging around his face, his hands on my back, his lips on mine.

It stayed there as I whispered, boundary-broken, “I don’t want to ruin your fucking life,” and he whispered back, “You won’t.” 

If he looked over my shoulder he’d see it. 

What’s the best that could happen?

He never did leave his wife. 

It stayed there, hung, months after his scent left my couch, as I applied and interviewed for half a dozen jobs and was rejected from each.

What’s the best that could happen?

It stayed there, hung, as I lay on my couch with tears silently streaming down my face and My Unlikely Friend on the phone. 

It stayed there as I choked, “I don’t think I can do this anymore… I can’t do this,” and My Unlikely Friend was silent on the other end of the phone. 

It stayed there as I thought, I’m so sorry to be this kind of call. I know he has received too many—or maybe not enough—calls from people who need to be talked into staying.

I can’t do this anymore.

It stayed there in the silence, through the silent tears, until he quietly asked me, “OK lady, how do you get stronger?” and after a beat I whispered, “You lift heavier weights.”

And it stayed there, hung, when I looked up after hanging up the phone with Angela at Fairfax Radiology, who told me I have breast cancer. 

What’s the best that could happen?

And it stayed there, hung, six weeks later—the day after I was rushed into two CT scans and an MRI following a concerning colonoscopy.

And it stayed there as I looked up from the test result that came through on MyChart and said to my brother, “It says I have stage three cancer.”

What’s the best that could happen?

In the virtual appointment, I start to feel a familiar sense of fear.

But what about that part where it says the cancer didn’t respond to chemotherapy?

He sighs. “I wish they wouldn’t include that in these reports. It’s not important. They’re looking for necrosis after chemo, for the whole thing to be gone. It wasn’t. We knew that. It’s not important. Everything else is excellent.”

Everything else is excellent.

The best that could happen.

But I still have to do chemo, he tells me. Just to be sure.

“OK,” I reply.

A heavy weight. 

“But I’m not going to include oxaliplatin in any of the rounds,” he says. “You don’t have neuropathy and I don’t want to give it to you.”

A lighter load. 

“No problem! I’ll do it,” I say. 

Does this mean I have to start thinking about what’s next? I think. Please don’t send me back to last fall.

The following week I go to the cancer center for blood work. We’re testing everything: CBC and metabolic panel per usual, various vitamins to see if we can find out why my hair keeps shedding. 

Oh, and Signatera.

The test that tracks tumor markers in my bloodstream. The test that had previously dropped to 0.

And then went up.

“The important one,” I tell the phlebotomist as she wrapped a tourniquet around my arm. “I forgot we were doing that one too!” 

We laugh.

The Signatera results come in sooner than expected. A MyChart notification pops up on my phone as I leave for my surgical post-op. I open the app and immediately cry.

What’s the best that could happen?

My mom, a former interior designer, moved the print the last time she was up taking care of me. It has been replaced with a corkboard, where I can make a vision board—of what comes next. The board hangs, blank, next to my TV.

I can no longer see the print when I sit on my couch.

What’s the best that could happen?

At my post-op, I sit on the exam table waiting for my surgeon. She walks in. 

“How ya doin’?” she asks.

I smile. 

“Did you see my Signatera results?” I ask.

“No,” she replies.

“They came back negative.”

In my car, after I saw the results, tears came into my eyes immediately. 

It was the first time in the eight months since I first heard the words “came back positive for cancer” that I cried right away. 

I plugged my phone into my car, put it in reverse, and drove to my post-op.

I took the road I used to take to go to work. I wondered if I’d ever work there again. The river stretched to my right. I saw a detail on a bridge I’ve never noticed before. I turned and looked at the city. That’s not for me anymore, I thought.

Tears came and went throughout the drive, and another thought broke its way through:

You are so strong.

“Well, of course it came back negative,” my surgeon said. “I cut the thing out of you!”

“Yeah, but…” I said.

And then I remembered a DM I got on Instagram from Sarah’s mom. 

Sarah was killed in a car accident. Black ice. She was 18. I was 17. 

Her mom wrote, “With all you’ve been through, it’s no wonder you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

I remember the day I found out. My parents sat my brother and me down on the couch.

“We have bad news,” they said. “Sarah was in an accident. She died.”

“Sarah who?” I asked blankly.

They paused.

“But she always wears a seatbelt,” I said. “I don’t understand.”

The only thing I could eat for a week was coconut macaroons.

Back at my post-op, my surgeon tells me I’m healing well. I’m doing better than 90 percent of her patients.

“Well, we knew I was an overachiever, right?”

It’s a joke my entire care team and I have been making since this all started. Who gets two unrelated cancers at the same time?

“But this is the kind of overachieving I like to do.”

She clears me to eat whatever I want. To move in any way that feels good. 

My best friend would tell me to celebrate.

My Unlikely Friend would tell me to recognize my wins.

I keep the news to myself.

I drive to a coffee place and order a fancy $7 latte. 

I sit outside and write. 

I walk to a store. I see a dress. I try it on. I buy it. 

I go to Sweetgreen and order a kale salad, the food I miss more than any other.

The next day I put in my AirPods and walk to the gym. I no longer have to drive there and walk on the treadmill.

When I arrive, I scan the tag on my keychain, grab a small towel, and walk the two flights of stairs up to the main part of the gym.

I do some dynamic stretches and head over to the weight machines.

I sit on the seat, lift my feet, and place them on the plate. I open the Notes app on my phone and check what weight I pressed the last time I was on this machine, a few weeks ago. It was the first time I’d been on it in more than six months.

I subtract twenty pounds from the last amount I pressed, turn towards the stack of weights, pull out the silver pin, raise it, and slide it back in.

I adjust my feet on the plate, push through my heels, and press the seat backward against the weight.

I did twelve reps last time. Today I’ll do ten.

I rest 30 seconds between sets.

On the last rep of the last set, I press up, then descend more slowly as I count down: 3, 2, 1—letting the resistance work against my legs.

I grin. 

This is the other way you get stronger.

Time under tension.

 

---

 

If you liked this post, you may also like “The Plunge”

To listen to an audio version of this on Spotify, click here. To listen on Apple Podcasts, click here.

To get posts sent directly to your inbox, click “Subscribe” at the top of the page.