A New Hello

I was chatting with someone about the beer mile yesterday, still an odd place to have been interviewed for. Still I was chatting about how I never do it with a beer I want to have often because it creates bad associations. Nonetheless, this week I've been playing with changing associations to a song that comes to mind almost every time I step into an MRI machine, a disturbed hello to the Sound of Silence. 

It wasn't a thorough effort, simply listening to other songs that literally are named Hello. Lionel Richie was the first to come to mind, quoted in today's title about a thought to sing to that machine, 'Hello, is it me you're looking for?' The theory is that they are looking for any changes to this brain tumor, to see if this cancer has grown. That invader fees like someone who walks into your house trying to rob all that's precious. There are reasonable people who would run in that situation but I grew up in a tough neighborhood and while in the entirety of my life, I've never started a fight, let's just say I've finished a few. If anyone ever did that in my house, they'd find me responding. I hope it never happens for many reasons but if it ever does perhaps once they meet what I keep near my bed for any emergency, I'll get it together enough to say "Hello, is it me you're looking for?" It obviously is not but I couldn't control the break in to my brain my cancer but I hope if it ever has or ever does try to stretch beyond where it currently is, that's the line it feels is being delivered from the rest of my mind, heart and soul. Those are the pump up thoughts I try to have, the ones that carried me to 3rd place at the pace I wanted to keep yesterday during a 5k. Kiana has her 5k tonight so she was kind enough to volunteer at the water stop and that may well be why I was able to close well.

There are negative possibilities that could come from the MRI. Yesterday I had lunch with a friend that we met at a church I've only ever been to for a race and the funeral of a brain cancer survivor I wrote of recently. While meeting him was definitely a blessing in the day, there is no way to not thing about that something could have changed and that maybe my funeral is not too far away. The most currently daunting Hello in my music library also has been listened to, it's Evanescence's Hello and the entire song is the haunting haunted type:

If I smile, and don't believe 
Soon I know I'll wake from this dream
Don't try to fix me, I'm not broken.
Hello, I'm the lie living for you so you can hide.
Don't cry.

Suddenly I know I'm not sleeping
Hello, I'm still here.
All that's left of yesterday.

By happenstance because literally none of us have the same doctor there are a few brain cancer friends who all have MRI's right around this time. Only two of us are in the same town anymore, the 3rd had a growth last December and is no longer alive. Another grew about a year ago so they're every 3 months but therefor their every other one still overlaps but they are in treatment and doing well but her and her significant other decided not to have kids. A third had some growth a while back and he has gone into kick ass treatment and he and his doctor got the results yesterday and were pleased. His next one will now be 4 moths. The other I still have no idea what happened and so I hope is all is well. One thing I will not be ever is in denial of the very real possibilities that come to people with this disease. Of course we all die but brain cancer has more statistical probability models than getting hit in a car accident etc. 

So I go in there in a bit wondering if soon I'll be working on my wedding and thinking about some medical decisions including end of life. It's no coincidence that I've been trying to figure out how to update my will in light of my upcoming nuptials. But I also spent some time in a furniture store yesterday looking at a table to complete one room's remodeling. I have neither updated the will nor did I buy the table... letting both maybes linger a little longer. 

Still, with rare exception, I have run or biked to and from my MRI. It's only 2.5 miles away after all. Depending on how much the contrast dye makes me want to or actually gets me to vomit is how much I variate the route to enjoy the route. Today, since it's summer time and both Kiana and Elaine will be joining me, I hope to talk them into biking the route there and back. For the longest time, my bike was my car due to 3 years of driving restrictions because of seizures from this thing. There's something freeing about getting to do it as a choice and perhaps it's naivete but I proposed with a ring that had hope on it, it's still the hope that movement outside is keeping my blood flowing to the good places and away from the tumor. Did I mention I have another 5k with the girls tonight and I'm getting up tomorrow and Saturday for a longer run? 

I'll get the results tomorrow. As always best case scenario is we took a really expensive picture of you to tell you you're not any better or any worse. There are people who I suppose hope things have magically gone away but I just have never even wished that was the case, the little girl I'm raising and the girl who is out my league that I'm marrying is probably already pushing it with the universe being extra nice in giving me good luck. The machine I'll sit in today doesn't change anything; it just tells me what's there, if anything ahs changed. We appreciate reinforcement of feelings I suppose, why we honk or swear at those people we don't like in traffic, why we send thank you cards and gifts, why we say I love you, they are demonstrations of actions when they are at their most honest. 

Still, I didn't sleep great last night. If I'm lucky, I'll do what I've done in the past and fall asleep in the machine since it's the possibilities not the process that can create stress. If not, I'll try to think about the fact Kiana's been in a transition to middle school this week and the bike rides we've had. I'll think about tonight's race and margarita (Kiana only gets to share in half of that). I'll think about the RSVP's to the wedding that have come and how I really hope so and so gets out on the dance floor. I'll think about all the jokes people have been making about my hair. It's a lonely tunnel in there and it's not wise to only let my mind wonder on what could be happening in my brain and not about what's going on in the rest of my life. 

But when it's done, I imagine the Hello I'll be thinking about will be Adele's and as I leave that facility to bike home, it will be good to say "Hello from the outside, at least I can say that I've tried." So if you're reading this, thank you and well the next time we see each other, let's have a good hello.