Don't freak out

OK, maybe I won't if you give me more information.

Photo of a board with the words “don’t panic” is by Tonik on Unsplash.

“Don’t freak out, but I’m referring you to the Cancer Center.”

I had gone in for my yearly checkup, and these were my doctor’s words to me as she read the results of my bloodwork. My ferritin level was high. It might be that I just had hemochromatosis, which would require me to have blood drawn off regularly for the rest of my life, and hopefully not a cancer of the blood.

That was the extent of the information she gave me. I had never heard of ferritin or hemochromatosis. I tried to ask some questions, but I was in shock and the doctor’s responses were just repeats of what she’d already told me. She seemed in a hurry to be done with the increasingly hysterical patient in front of her.

So yeah, I freaked out. (By the way, no one in the history of ever has been calmed down by the words “don’t freak out.”) It was six weeks before the Cancer Center could get me in for an appointment. In that time I imagined all kinds of catastrophic scenarios.