#5 My husband was....right!! I KNOW!!! [sigh]
How it unfolded in my mind would turn out to be vastly different to what actually took place.
Sonya M.
6/10/20262 min read
The Boob Chronicles, Part 3:
The Appointment Where “I will be in control”
f you’ve been following along, you’ll know that sharing the diagnosis has been… an adventure. People react like they’ve just been handed a plot twist in a soap opera, and I’ve become surprisingly good at calming them down. But then came the next chapter, the appointment. The one where I decided I was absolutely, unquestionably in charge.
Rob and I sat down in the doctor’s office, and before the poor man could even open his mouth, I launched into my very polished, very rehearsed speech. I said, with all the confidence of someone who had practised this in the mirror: “Hi. I know it’s something, it’s not benign, it needs dealing with. Left is clear, right is not. I don’t want details. I just want the plan. Only the plan.”
Clear and direct, or so I thought but the doctor immediately replied with “Well, it’s not good. It’s serious and do you know about mastectomy…”
And that is where I ended that conversation. Hard stop! That conversation was over. I shut it down so fast I’m surprised the air pressure in the room didn’t change.
I said, “Sorry I don't mean to sound rude, but I’m not having THAT conversation. No doom and gloom, no catastrophising, let’s skip straight to the referral if we could please" and that's what happened.
Later in the car, Rob, ever so logical and quite brave [nah he doesn’t hold back lol ] said, “Maybe you didn’t explain it in a way he could understand.”
Excuse me? I turned to him like, WTF? “What part of ‘I don’t want details, just the plan’ was unclear?”
But then… I thought about it, realllllly thought about and realised with some degree of annoyance.......he was right. I KNOW!! I can hear you from here, “WTF?! He was RIGHT??”
Husbands, partners, significant others everywhere are probably clutching their....well just clutching or clenching but yes, Rob was right.
He’s right a lot of the time [let’s keep that between us] and it realllly annoyed me that he was right this time too. Boo!
Anyhoo..... apparently “just the plan” needs to be broken down into smaller, more digestible pieces, possibly with diagrams and other graphical representation to get my message across.
I clearly need to work on my delivery.
