I did not want to go to the doctor about my weight because A) I think I am a doctor due to all the ailments I’ve had and I had determined it was stress, B) because I didn’t have the money and 3) because I could not handle if something was really wrong with me.  I mean honestly, the way my luck was going, it was inevitable that I would have some terminal illness no one has ever heard of and there is no cure for.  I was not interested in knowing of some eighteenth century illness that only one percent of people have ever had has been brought back by little old deteriorating me.  I lost the battle and after watching myself become merely a head with limbs I decided I may as well go.  So off to the doctor I went.  She was my doctor for many years and she was beautiful and graceful and always wore elaborate colorful outfits and would talk in a smooth Indian accent with ease and comfort in her own skin.  I admired her, but I also respected her.  She spoke to me as if we were long time friends and was always straightforward and pulled no punches.  Except for the cultural differences she reminded me a lot of me.  At least the me I used to be.  I walked into the office and said my hello to the staff as I always did and I could see them looking at me as if they had seen a ghost.  “Wow, you look thin.” was of course what I heard next.  “Not really” I responded.  “Come in and let’s get you weighed. She will see you in a few minutes”  I went into the back and took off my shoes and waltzed myself over to the scale.  I could see the look of horror on the nurses face as she moved the knob down a little more, a little more and then a little more. “My goodness”  she said with surprise.  She let out an awkward laugh once she saw my face looking at her with annoyance.  “Well, when was the last time you were under 100 pounds?”  she asked me.  I was almost embarrassed.  I didn’t answer as I assumed it was rhetorical.  I was always thin, like always.  I remember being 116 lbs. when I got pregnant with my first daughter, so under 100 didn’t sound so bad.  Except now I looked like one of those lollipop heads.  You know the ones, where their heads are disproportionate to their bodies and they look like a lollipop with a big head and skinny sick body.  That was me.  It wasn’t cute or pretty or sexy, it was gross. I headed into the examination room and waited for the beautiful doctor to appear.  When she did the first thing she said was “Oh my goodness, you have wasted away to nothing. what’s going on?”  I then began to explain the happenings of the past few months.  The accident, the fighting, the homelessness, etc.  She looked at me shaking her head and spoke ever so softly “What a horrible trauma you have gone through, I would be in a corner crying if only one of those things happened to me.  No wonder you can’t eat.  Lets take a look and see if we can find out if there is any other reason this is happening.”  As I lay on the exam table she made  few “hmms”  and “Ahhs”  and I finally bit and asked “What?”  She said without hesitation “Your lymph nodes are swollen.”  Just like that.  Matter of factly.  We then began to discuss the illness surrounding excessive weight loss and swollen lymph nodes. She said “There are two major things I want to test for; Cancer and HIV.”  We began talking about these two illnesses as if we were having coffee talking about the weather.  It did not compute what she was saying.  It did not register all the tests she went over she was going to run on me.  All I heard was Cancer……and the rest didn’t matter.  I walked out of the office with prescriptions for tests and blood work and this and that and I drove.  I drove and almost went to see HIM.  Almost.  I stopped in a parking lot and called my girlfriends who insisted it was just tests and there was nothing wrong with me other than stress.  I was not going to make it through this week.  This was it.  If I wasn’t a basket case already, this would surely bring me to my knees.  And I couldn’t tell my kids and I couldn’t tell my parents, but I did tell Gingham.  And in true Gingham fashion he said “Well, woman we should have sex one more time if this is it for you.”  Seriously?