When the Black Dog Barks

After boxing 6,000 books, scrubbing floors in clouds of bleach, bringing in tiler guys, plumber guys, electrician guys and many others, the dear old lady is sold. She was on the market about a week. May she embrace the next family as warmly as she embraced us.

On Monday, my health insurance changed. So I convey this fact to the nice receptionist at my radiation oncologist’s office, the place where a gargantuan, white phone-like object beams rays at me every day. The receptionist asks: “And what is the phone number for Acme Health Insurance?” She is completely unfazed when I confess that I don’t have the number and didn’t even think to get it. She smiles. I may be a dithering fool, but she isn’t. She turns to her computer and starts browsing that Interwebs Thingy.

A few days later, I’m at the office of my medical oncologist. She works for a different agency than my radiation oncologist, though she’s located a mere four floors above him in the same building. Of course, mere proximity does not mean common access to my insurance info (thank you, Mr. Obama, for seeing the idiocy in this). I tell this receptionist that my insurance has changed. Being what as I’ve been just a little distracted lately, I still don’t know Acme’s phone numbers, just my own group and subscriber I.D. The receptionist stares at me, speechless at first. She, too, has a hulking big monitor on her desk but it sits unused. “I can’t do anything without that phone number,” she says. I don’t even tell her what I’m thinking: “I’ll just google this on my Iphone while you sit on your ass.” I recite the number for her. I’m too nice to even remotely suggest that I think she’s an idiot.

So, you see, even in a black depression, when I’m minutes away from getting what I presume is going to be some of the worst news I’ll ever get, I’m still a nice person. I know that I’m going to get bad news from my oncologist -- it only makes sense because I’ve had my allotment of good news for the year. With the contract on our house just a few hours old, it's now time for the universe to remind me that I am its plaything. This'll be a good time for chemo. With the house sold, I'll be able to leave beds unmade when I’m too sick to get out of my own.

My oncologist breezes into her office. “So, your Oncotype score came back. What would you guess it is?” I’m not sure why interrogating me in this manner is interesting to her, but I’m willing to play along. “Gray area,” I say. “The intermediate range.” And the gray area, I knew, meant chemo for sure. Then my oncologist lays it on me: “That’s what I would have predicted, too. But you are solidly in the low-risk range for recurrence.”

I feel the air rushing back into my throat. My first thoughts are of family and friends and how soon I can call or email them. My second thoughts are about The Bike, and how soon I can get back on it. My third thoughts are about plastic surgery and the tee-shirt I’ll wear after I’m finished with reconstruction: “Hell Yes They’re Fake! The Real Ones Were Trying to Kill Me!” My fourth thought: I’m going to see the kind of hair-stylist rich ladies pay for, the kind who looks at your face and says, “Oh, Madame, your nose is so short! With the right style, you will be the second coming of Grace Kelly.” After months of not cutting my hair because I figured it was all going to fall out anyway, I’m going to get it cut, colorized, and moussed to perfection. Or, you know, not. The bike is going to take a lot of my time for the next two months. And, the Sweet Gods of the Vine know, there’s nothing easier than a braid.

So what have we learned? I don’t know about you, but when I run into an old acquaintance who says they are suffering from some illness or tragedy, I say the usual platitude, because it’s true: “I can’t even imagine what you must be going through.” And if did try to imagine it, I’d get it wrong. Before I was diagnosed with a potentially life-threatening illness, I would have predicted that I’d stand up to it without any signs of depression. Oh, I expected to be a little downcast, but not depressed. I’m not the kind of person, I would have told you, who sees the black hole lurking in every fluffy cloud. Now I wonder what I’m really made of.

Winston Churchill called his occasional depressions his “Black Dog”. Brits are definitely the ones to teach us all a little something about putting that particular pooch back in his crate. Britain in the 1980s, when I lived there, was a poor place. At my first job, I made what was considered a good salary, but it was barely enough to keep a parakeet alive. The meager salary afforded me very little in the way of living quarters. I hated the tiny rooms in the tiny flat, the on-demand water heater that filled the bath while galaxies whirled. I hated our flat’s ‘nice’ wall paper -- Irish landlords and Indian restaurants have a lot more in common than you think. And then I bought a place, my first home to call my own! And things only got worse. There was no central heat. In the mornings, I dashed across the frigid hall from the warmed bedroom to the tiny bath where the on-demand water heater was the sole source of warmth. At least we didn’t have to put coins in the gas meter. That little feature of British life was spared us. The gas company trusted us to pay our bills.

But, on the whole, it didn’t seem so bad. I’d like to think that if I was a little more stalwart then than I am now, it was because of the British themselves, infecting me with their air of gratitude. For almost anything. Put two sugars in their tea and they start glowing with delight. At my office, the tea ladies would come around every morning and afternoon with a trolley loaded with Digestive and Rich Tea biscuits. My co-workers would become unreasonably excited, especially given that they’d rarely take more than a single “biscuit”, if that. Brits back then didn’t over-stuff, though I hear young Brits are getting that habit. Anyway, though I found my new mates just as repressed and reserved as they were famous for being (hey, not as bad the Finns!), they had a real talent for feeling grateful whenever there was even the slightest glimmer on the horizon.

So I think I know something about counting one’s blessings. But if that doesn’t work next time the Black Dog barks, I may turn to pharmaceuticals.