On Wednesday, September 19, 2007 at about 4:30 pm, Dr. Olson, in a very straightforward, no nonsense manner informed me that a biopsy of a lymph node in my neck reveals that I am harbouring a Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma. He was gracious enough to give me a copy of the pathologist’s report (which I will try to input at a later time when I have it with me). Good Doctor, that one…

So far we’ve done the CT scan of the neck and chest, and we have an appointment with a Dr. Williams at the University of Alberta scheduled for Tuesday, October 2, 2007 at 11:00 am. We were contacted by Dr. Naiker’s (the GP) office yestereday to discover if an MRI had been scheduled yet. I told Susan (gee, I like her!) that we were unaware of an appointment. She is going to order one as soon as possible… we should hear today.

I keep using the ‘we’ pronoun because this isn’t just about me at the moment. Gail, my darling wife, is in this with me. In ways that I can’t articulate right now, I think that it is harder on her. But she is my nearly constant companion, my shadow, my lover and best friend. Our daughters are also affected. And my family, and Gail’s family, and our friends, and the people I work with… There doesn’t seem to be any casual bystanders, well, expect maybe for the neighbours who haven’t got a clue as to what’s going on…

I had originally intended to play this one very close to my chest and let as few people as possible know for as long as possible. I was dissuaded of this very early on (hours!), and in some ways I’m glad that we have told the number of folks that we have. It should make it easier in the long run.