Monday Monday

...is the big day.

The day of the colonoscopy. 8:30 am. If you're the praying sort, send a shout-out for me, K? And maybe one tomorrow too, as I get to experience the very real realness of "the prep". Let's just say that Les and I have agreed not to discuss it. He'll make sure I do not pass out from dehydration, but other than that, we're going to completely disavow any knowledge of the entire 24 hours preceding the procedure.

When I went in for my consult appointment yesterday, the nurse who took my blood pressure told me that my numbers were slightly high. I told her it must be nerves or something, because I'm usually told that my blood pressure is slightly on the low side. Is that possible? Does anxiety really mess with your BP? I have no idea. All I know is that I was about to get an expert, specialist opinion about my colon and its guesstimated state of health, and I was tweaking.

I wanted him to say that the chance of cancer is so remote, this is just a precaution, try not to freak out, your symptoms are common for a number of potential problems. But he didn't really say that. He said I needed a colonoscopy ASAP, and that his nurses would schedule one for his very first available appointment. And he told me that he does in fact have colon cancer patients in their late 20s and early 30s. So don't ever blow off symptoms, especially when family history is involved. Oh, and he also reiterated that by the time you are symptomatic, it is almost always metastatic. Almost. Not always.

I asked him if he thought that it was still possible that all these symptoms really ARE just a dietary or OBGYN issue, and he said "Sure, that's still a possibility. But get the test immediately."

So there you have it.

I started scripting a speech to deliver to Les and our friends and family in the event of bad news on Monday. Then I scrapped that, decided to think and live and pray hopefully, and direct my nervous energy to something future-focused. So I started scripting a new speech to Les roughly titled "I Have Decided I Do Not Want To Have Natural-Born Children". Because over the past two weeks, I pretty much made up my mind. I do not want to pass along my toxic soup of genetic material. Les has a pretty hefty list of cancer and other diseases on his side too. And so, with the anxiety ramping up that my genetic inheritance is conspiring to do me in, I had decided. No babies shall be knit together of our Bad Genes. If it turns out that I am not rotting from the inside, and am in fact relatively healthy, I decided that adoption and/or foster parenting was the only path to motherhood that I wanted to pursue.

The speech was coming along nicely in my head. I made some points, summarized my feeling about it, supported my position with scriptural/spiritual callings to care for the orphans and love "the least of these", the fact that I'll be 34 in 3 weeks, all that. But the real kicker, the real home-run of my declaration, was the fact that I would strongly prefer to nip my family history of disease right here in the bud. The Buck Stops With My Womb.

I felt good about this. I felt like I had drafted some future goals. Pursue motherhood, via adoption. Get moving with the research and the saving-up. Start talking to people who have done it. Join a group or something. If I'm healthy, who knows for how long? No guarantees. No promises of long and happy life. Get your butt in gear and make this happen. Because I really DO want a family, just not one made of busted-up genes.

Then. I started thinking about my parents. I started thinking about the decisions they made to have children (not just one, but three), when they knew that my dad's life expectancy was around 40 years old when they got married. I thought about their funerals - their jam-packed memorials with people from every stage and slice of their lives there to grieve and remember. How many people they touched. Bravely, unafraid of the future even when it looked bleak. I thought about my dad's laugh, his faith, his creativity, his passion for the wilderness and big dogs and the smell of the woods. I thought about his life-long friendships. And his commitment to missions and missionaries around the world. I thought about mom, her never-failing positive outlook, her perseverance, love, devotion, and how much everyone in her life loved her. I remembered how much her sisters and brothers loved her and how much she struggled in her life... so gracefully. The lunches she packed, and birthday cakes she frosted, and terrible high school musicals she sat through. With a smile.

Are those not things worth passing on? Doesn't some of that, even a little piece, duke it out with cancer and diabetes and Alzheimer's and stroke? I wonder. I don't know if I am very much like my grandparents. I don't think I really am. Maybe it is not worth the risk for the tiny specks of Mom and Dad my kids may or may not inherit.

But just as I had my speech all nicely laid out in my head, I began to doubt again. Decisions lined with doubt. The story of so much of my life.

Anyway, it feels calm and restful to think about these things today. On Monday the whole world may look like a very different place.