Cut It Out

I'll be visiting my family doctor on Monday for two specific reasons. The first is to get a small cyst cut out of my neck. The second is to do a repeat pap screening as the last one I had came back abnormal.

Usually, I would have worked myself up into an absolute frenzy of worry by now. Yet I haven't given the pap a worrisome thought - well, I did at first hence that blog post, but haven't since.

I've spent my whole life worrying. This stems directly from my mother's death when I was nine years old. I worry that I will get breast cancer and die just like she did. I worry that my father will drop dead from a heart attack (don't ask me why, there's no family history of heart disease). I worry that my brothers will get hit by cars and die. I worry that my best friend will die in a boating accident. I worry that I'll come home and find my cat dead on the floor.

Um, yeah. These are the thoughts that have occupied my head most of my adult life. They are always there, but get the loudest when I'm alone. This is probably why I do whatever it takes to keep myself busy (read: distracted).

I learned recently that my mother was a chronic worry wart. My cousin told me one of the many things she would fret about was what everyone, especially the neighbours, thought about the way she was raising us kids. That's why she would make sure we were always well dressed and clean - she didn't want anyone to ever think she was a bad mother.

Which explains why every single picture I have from my childhood was perfect. It never really occurred to me that anything was strange until I went back and actually looked.

All of them were posed. We were never in anything other than our Sunday best. Our hair was always combed. Our shoes always tied. And clean as a whistle! I don't have one picture of us playing in, or eating dirt. And come on, with two little boys, there was bound to be some atrocious accident that was captured on film. Nope. Nothing.

Here's my favourite picture from my childhood:

I know this was just a regular day at our house. We weren't dressed up for church or a family function or anything like that.

I love that my mother put bows in my hair. You can see how nicely our hair is combed and bangs are trimmed (crooked yes, but trimmed nonetheless). And we're all wearing suits!

The biggest thing my mother worried about was getting cancer and dying before she could finish raising us. And that's exactly what happened. There was no history of cancer in my family and blammo, she got it.

I remember my mother took every preventative measure known at the time to ward off the Big C. She read somewhere that using a hairdryer could cause cancer. She chucked out her big bad blower and refused to have her hair dried at the salon after a wash & cut. She read that broccoli was a good defense, so you can bet we had broccoli with every meal. She didn't smoke, she didn't drink and she exercised.

And still, she got it.

I, on the other hand, have done everything wrong. I eat junk food, I drink a lot, I don't exercise aside from my dance classes and running to catch a subway train. And now I'm faced with the possibility of cancer cells in my cervix.

And for some reason, I haven't worried about it.

Maybe my brain went into protective mode and has blocked it all out of my mind so that I don't worry myself to death. Whatever the reason, I hope I continue not worrying. And even if the results come back positive, I would still want to continue not worrying until they are actually yanking my uterus out.

Say a prayer for me people. I appreciate all the help I can get on this one.