I've known, and I haven't told you.
Not because I don't want to, but maybe because I haven't known how. Maybe because saying it makes it true, makes it real, turns it from something I've just read and kept to myself into something that is actually happening.
I've known for the past day or so that my father needed to go to the hospital for a biopsy. Where it was to be performed, my mother didn't say. Not knowing where, exactly, the biopsy was needed, bothered me.
I just got another email from my mother. Dad's going to have a PET scan, and then they're going to do biopsies on his lungs, his liver, and his pancreas. Russell—Mom's cousin, and Mom and Dad's GP—has told Mom that he thinks it is some kind of inflammation, although he does not know what.
Cancer is also a possibility.
I hate even saying it. The only thing uglier than the word is the condition itself.
As Mom said, if that's what it is, we'll talk about it when the time comes.
