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On 5/10, just as though he was waiting for my return from Japan, my surgeon’s assistant called me on the phone.

“Hi, how are you? Has your weight increased a bit?” I answered that I lost all the weight I had gained in Japan because of the dumping syndrome I suffered 48 hours before my departure. “We would like you to take a MRI, because the CAT scan taken in April showed some shadow in your liver. Even though we think that it is the same one you had last year when the radiologist pointed it out, we decided to be extra careful and have you go through the test.”

Since I had totally eradicated from my mind the possibility of my cancer coming back, this phone call was a shock. After arranging the MRI appointment for 5/13, I called my oncologist even though his office was already closed by then. There were two immediate issues I wanted to address:

1) I did not want to tell Mark yet about this test. He was in Japan, and could not do anything but worry over possibly nothing.

2) I did not want bad news to be broken while working at the simultaneous interpretation assignment that would start on Tuesday the following week.

He agreed that I did not need to tell Mark the situation yet, and told me to come to the office after the MRI on Monday. He said that he would call the MRI reader of the day from his office to get the preliminary result, if I could be with him. According to him, he and my surgeon talked about the scan results about a week ago, and told me, “it will probably be nothing. If not, it is simply more challenging.”

While having made a decision not to tell Mark, I became quite anxious about the test over the weekend. So, I decided to talk to Dr. R at the church, who is a renowned hematologist/ oncologist, and who had been my oncologist’s teacher.

After explaining what I could expect as a treatment if this were the metathesis, he asked me what was worrying me most now. When I answered that I hoped that the news would not be broken during my simultaneous assignment, he laughed and said, “as long as you are worried about everyday life like that, you should be OK. Your immunity should be working very well.”

Well, thus, I went to the MRI in BWH this morning, leaving my house at 6:00 a.m., and saw my oncologist in the afternoon.

Fortunately, the preliminary results showed nothing cancerous, as everybody expected.

Even though it was scary, I was most appreciative of the BWH medical system and the collaborative efforts between the doctors. While being one of the best hospitals in the US regarding cancer treatments, the doctors are humble about their diagnostics and treatment. Multiple eyes look at one test or one film to avoid missing anything, and they try to avoid assumptions.