My big scare

I was avoiding writing about this topic for the last month....partially out of superstition and partially out of self-preservation.

About 6 weeks ago I told George that he needed to go to the doctor to have his eye checked out. It had been bloodshot in the same place for quite awhile by then...I wasn't sure, but think it was for more than a month before that. I had noticed him removing his glasses alot (which he's always done) then rubbing his eye, so I thought perhaps he was causing it to be bloodshot. For a few weeks I tried to catch him and stop it unsuccessfully (always saw it too late.) Finally I decided his eye was infected or something and insisted he go to the doctor.

As expected, his doctor sent him to an Opthamologist. The night of that appt I was expecting him to come home and tell me it was infected and he had a prescription or something to handle it. Instead, that guy did a thorough exam, told him he wasn't sure what it was but that his right eye appeared to be protruding. He referred him to a second Opthamologist at GW (they have a dept there.) This started us getting nervous as I found it very odd that one Opthamologist refers you to another without any reason why.

Another week later and he had the appt with the 2nd guy. He got another thorough exam and another 'nothing definite', but the guy told him that there was something causing his eye to be pushed out from behind. He told him there were two possibilities...first it could be a thyroid problem although it would usually be both eyes, not just one. 2nd was that there was a mass behind his eye pushing it forward. So he scheduled an MRI.....3 WEEKS from that date was the first we could get.

Both of us were stunned, and totally freaked out for about 24 hours. Then we talked to his sister and told her about it, and she told us that his mother has thyroid problems and has been on medication for several years for it.

For the next three weeks (and your party was during this time Matt...which may well explain some things) we were on hold. We talked about it a little bit, but both of us knew that there was no point in sitting around dwelling on possibilities, so we mostly avoided the subject in any detail.

I went into denial....every time I started to think about it my thoughts went immediately to him dying and leaving me alone....and I was terrified by that thought. Having the knowledge that his mother had a history of thyroid problems allowed both of us to 'mostly' ignore it and get on with things. But thyroid??! That just sounded so implausible that I couldn't quite convince myself that's all it was.

Then the day of the MRI FINALLY arrived, and he comes home that night telling me they screwed up and he didn't have it. I'd been managing ok for 3 weeks until that moment, where I totally lost it because I became convinced we'd have to wait ANOTHER 3 weeks for their screwup. Although he had it the next day, that night made me realize how much this really was affecting me in every way. I'd been SOOO emotional recently over little things, freaking out easily...just not being me. I wasn't associating it with this directly until that moment.

Yesterday was results day finally.....at least 6 weeks after we initially went to the doctor. The first thing the tech tells us is 'oh, your thyroid is fine, tests were negative.' And nothing about the MRI, so we both had a freakout moment again. But she didn't say more and proceeded to do a bunch of tests again. Eventually we found out that the MRI was also clear.....so my honey is not going to die immediately from a brain tumor.

We still dont' know for sure what it is, but the doctor wasn't worried and still thinks it's probably thyroid-related.

Neither of us have ever been so relieved in our lives. I don't know if he was more scared, or I was. All I know is, I've never been through anything that bad before....and it's over finally.

I'm not a religious person at all. But I prayed my thanks to God anyhow and apologized for my doubt....thanking him for rewarding us anyhow.