My "Streak"

There is a streak in me, a streak that I can not name.  I do not know what to call it, but it is there.  It is part humor, part mischief, and part boundary pusher.  It isn’t evil or bad, but it has a strong will.  Bill says my streak makes his life exciting.  

My streak, which I struggle to name, is what prompts me to say, “Bill pull over!  Right there at Walgreen's.”  Just a half-hour before we found out my cancer was aggressively invading my small intestine and I needed surgery to take it out.  I marched into Walgreen's and scanned the candy shelves with laser focus.  I filled my arms to overflowing: a large bag of Red Vines licorice, Kit-Kats, Raisinets, Peanut M&M’s, etc.  I barely made it to the counter before my precariously balanced candy tumbled out of my hands.  I bought it all.  I shut the car door with Bill staring at me with a look of, “what was that all about.”  I reached in and starting eating, ripping the bags open like a child on Christmas morning tearing at the wrapping paper anxious to get at the gift inside.  Cancer be damned, I was going to be on a liquid diet soon enough, so I'd better get the good stuff while I could.  I barely made it through a hundred calories worth of sugar, when I got too sick to eat it.  Well, I made a valiant effort.

After being outside for a bit too long, I got a bad sunburn.  One of my friends looked at my lobster colored arms and admonished me to be careful and to put on more sunscreen.  I looked at her, with a twinkle in my eye and replied, “Why?  What's going to happen?  Am I going to get skin cancer?”   She stood there stone faced, not knowing what to say.  I assured her it was o.k. to laugh at cancer.  I still think my joke is hilarious, my daughter thinks it is morbid.

Bill and I sat in the all too familiar oncology office waiting to meet with the surgeon who would remove the part of my small intestine that was trying to kill me.  I had read about him before I arrived for my appointment.  Like most of the Mayo doctors, he specialized, then specialized again, then again and again and again and again.  Their degrees just never stop! Well, this particular surgeon specialized in taking out melanoma and breast cancer.  I watched a YouTube video of him explaining how he is changing the way double mastectomies are performed.  Ah, I thought, I know just what I am going to ask him.  

He and his entourage entered the examination room with a whoosh of air.  One moment Bill and I were sitting still, alone in our thoughts, and the next minute I was being peppered with questions from the surgeon, with a nurse furiously taking notes, an oncologist standing off to one side adding his two cents, and another doctor in training, just hoping he could someday command the room.  After a multitude of medical back and forth, he asked me if I had any questions.  I told him, yes, in fact, I did.  I asked him if he was a boy scout?  He looked at my quizzically.  Boy scouts, I explained, are taught that when they go somewhere they should always leave it better than they found it.  He was taking something out of me, and well, shouldn’t he leave me better than he found me?  Breastfeeding  five children had left my chest saggy and small, it only seemed right that his expertise be used in both areas, my gut and my chest.  He looked at me a little stunned, his entourage looked at him not sure what to do, I started to giggle and then he broke out into a belly laugh.  “I like the way you think,“ he said.  “Keep it up.”  I was surrounded by some of the world's best doctors discussing how to save my life, at the end of the discussion my “streak” thought it only appropriate to bring up my much needed breast augmentation that I never intend to get.  

What is this streak?  I don't know, but it has made some dark days just a bit brighter and for that I am grateful.