Off Topic: February Was No Fun I, Or, a Brief Word on Elizabeth Edwards

Around New Years I posted a note on Barack Obama’s Audacity of Hope and said it would be the first in a series of posts on presidential candidate’s autobiographies. While I have not added to the list I have been reading. The review of Hillary Clinton’s book is holding me up. I keep writing and rewriting. In the meantime I’ve read John Edwards’ Four Trials, Elizabeth Edwards’ Saving Graces and am halfway through Bill Richardson’s book.

The Edwards’ books came at an interesting time. In early February my doctor suggested I make an appointment with an oncologist. No real worry. But for too long something had been where something had no good reason to be. While it didn’t have the properties of anything scary and I’ve been very good at having all the tests that people in my demographic group should have and nothing untoward showed up, it just seemed best to get a definitive word. Since it wasn’t anything urgent my appointment with the oncologist was scheduled for 3 weeks later. Three weeks can be a long time to wonder. And it was during these three weeks that I finished Four Trials, which is mostly about lawsuits involving parents who died and left young children and young children with serious illnesses. Then I started Saving Graces which opens with Elizabeth Edwards being diagnosed with breast cancer. For reasons I do not understand myself I used the prescription for the oncologist as my bookmark. Nothing like a little salt in the wounds.

Saving Graces is a wonderful book. I loved it and highly recommend it for anyone. Keep Kleenex handy though. Unless you are heartless there are parts that will have you in tears. Not that it is a sad book. Sad spots, definitely, but her life in many ways is fairly ordinary. Her children are noisy in church. The neighbor kids eat her out of house and home. She has to stop on the way to a campaign event to buy a new shirt because she spilled fruit juice on the one she was wearing. I could relate to all of that. I just hoped we didn’t have anything else in common.

So the big day arrived and off I went to the oncologist. There is just no way to walk into a door labeled Surgical Oncology without at least an inward grimace. The pictures in the examination rooms do nothing to ease the spirit either. I made a nervous and dark-humored joke that the doctor acknowledged with a thin-lipped smile and made a note in my chart (“idiot” perhaps or maybe “jerk”). However she did lighten my day considerably by telling me that what I have is nothing more serious than whacky lymph nodes. No real reason for them to be behaving the way they are but no real harm in it either. Anything she did to fix them would probably cause more problems than it would solve.

Considering what she could have told me adding whacky lymph nodes to my list of personal physical idiosyncrasies (along with wandering kneecaps, funny looking toes, and an odd metabolism) is easily done.

Here is my brief word on Elizabeth Edwards: My heart and prayers go out to her and her family.