Early this afternoon I have to call Dr. B for information about the path report.  I go into the office.  Our postponed meeting has been rescheduled for today.  I call Dr. B, who is with a patient and will call back.  I leave my number, mention that I’ll be there until 4:30, and go into the meeting.  It is clear that we need to hire somebody, but not entirely clear at what level.  We accomplish a number of other small items.

Dr. B hasn’t called by the time I leave.  When I get home, there is email from a colleague that my extension just rang and went to voicemail.  I call Dr. B.  There are no surprises; it’s malignant, and the preliminary report suggests that it started at the pancreas, but that needs a couple of further test results for confirmation.  Dr B. asks when I will see the oncologist; I tell him Thursday.

I report this to my parents in their nightly call.  They ask about telling the rest of the family.  I say I’m not quite ready yet, and there is one cousin I want to speak to directly first, but I’ll let them know.

Meanwhile, there are friends I want to tell, but there’s an order to it, and I’ve been having trouble reaching the first one on the list.  This is someone who’s more like a cousin than a friend.  Our fathers were boyhood friends.  I’ve known her extended family, and she’s known mine.  We have made a date for me to call her at home this afternoon at about 5:30.

I get impatient, and try at 5:15.  As it happens, this is a good thing.  She is on her way out, and I have to push to make her accept that I need to talk to her now.  She hears the news and berates herself for having tried to put off the conversation.  (How could she have known?  When she did know, she listened, and was supportive and loving and helpful.  That’s what counts.)

Now that she knows, I can call the next friend on the list, someone I met through my cousin-friend and whose husband is a friend of my sweetie’s.  This is the call that I’ve wanted to make, so that my sweetie can talk to his friend (who, incidentally, has leukemia and is currently suffering from pneumonia) when he needs to.

And then I call another friend who is part of the cousin-friend network.

And I am tired, but I have started things in motion.