Technicolor Isn't Just A Dreamcoat

Chapter II

I was scheduled to a lab that did ultrasounds in color. That in itself was pretty cool. I mean, who doesn't want to see their innards lit up on a TV screen? In full-blown technicolor, no less.

Hubbie came with me and was as supportive as one can be when your twenty seven year-old wife is having scans for masses in her abdomen. We were both stressed out and scared. My enduring all the poking and prodding and him standing by helpless. Not good for either psyche.

Technicolor LabCoat gave me the ultrasound. And it was incredible to look at. All the reds and oranges and blues and greens. I didn't even have to smoke anything for this show.

We had been forewarned. Red = Bad. Very, very bad. Red meant bloodflow, and bloodflow meant tumor.

My result? A lovely dark brown color. No blood flow. No tumor.

Relief lasted the span of my exhale.

If not a tumor...what?

Chocolate cyst. That's when I first heard the term. Damn you, Dr. Sampson. Only a man would take something so wonderful as chocolate and apply it to a medical condition.

Technicolor LabCoat explained to us in layman's terms that chocolate cysts were cysts filled with old blood. And he gave us a demonstration.

Watch this! he motioned to the monitor.

Distracted, we looked up.

Wham! Up shoved the vaginal transducer against my cervix. We watched the image of my abdomen on the TV screen. The fluid in the cysts began to swirl in a lazy circle.

Cool! we said.

Wham! Wham!

Seriously, dude. We get what's happening. I'm not a pinball machine so lay off the fucking flipper.

We left the office in good spirits. A tad sore, but we felt a spring in our step and a lightening of our mood. A nice contrast to the semi-desperation we had felt the weeks prior to this visit.

We had determined that I didn't have cancer. That my condition was not only treatable but likely something that would solve itself.

How naive we were.