Olivia Johnson

The Scan Showed a Mass. It Wasn't Cancer.

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I lost my mom to colon cancer ten years ago today. For ten years, I was sure I was next. This is the letter I wrote her this morning. I almost didn't post it. Dear Mom, Ten years. I still reach for the phone on Sunday nights to call you. I need to tell you some things this year. Some of them are hard. Bear with me, the way you always did. I never told you how scared I was at the end. You were so brave about it, and I didn't want to take that from you. But I sat in that hospital parking lot more nights than you know, gripping the steering wheel, thinking about all the times you'd said your stomach hurt. Remember? For years. "Just my nerves," you'd say. "Just something I ate." And the doctors said it too. Nerves. Diet. Your age. By the time anyone looked properly, it was everywhere. You were 61. I turned 50 a few months after the funeral, and I made a promise in your kitchen that I'd never let that happen to me. I scheduled every screening they offered. I've had three colonoscopies, Mom. I know that prep drink better than I know my own recipes. And every one came back clean. But here's what I never told anybody. Not Mike, not the girls. The pain never went away. Bloating after every meal until I looked four months along. Cramps that bent me over the counter. Days stuck, then days I couldn't leave the house. Tired in a way that sleep didn't even reach. My doctor called it IBS and gave me a pamphlet about fiber. And every single time my stomach hurt, Mom, every time, a voice in my head said the same thing. This is how it started for her. I'd lie awake at 3 a.m. with my hand on my stomach, feeling for lumps. I'd google symptoms until the sun came up. I'd go to the girls' recitals and birthday dinners and smile and clap, and the whole time I was quietly planning which friend would help Mike with the house after I was gone. Ten years of that. You'd have hated it. You'd have told me to quit being dramatic and eat some toast. Then, this past spring, something happened I need to tell you about. I couldn't sleep, as usual, so I put on one of those documentary shows about parasites. The kind you used to call "the gross channel" and then watch anyway. There was a woman on it with stomach pain, just like mine. They ran tests. And they found a mass in her colon. I stopped breathing. I actually pressed my hand over my mouth. Because I knew that moment. I'd lived that moment in my head a thousand times. The doctor's face. The word "mass." But it wasn't cancer. It was a clump of worms. Dead, decaying worms, from raw salmon in sushi. They'd died inside her and never come out. Mom, I eat sushi every Friday. The girls and I started going after your funeral, because you always said you wanted to try it and never did. Ten years of Friday nights. I sat up in bed until morning. And here's the part that's going to make you laugh, wherever you are. I called Uncle Ray. I know. I hadn't called him in two years. But he's raised hogs his whole life, and I couldn't think of anyone else who wouldn't laugh at me. He didn't laugh. He was quiet for a minute, and then he said, "Your mother never told you about the spring wormwood?" Mom. Why didn't you ever tell me? He said that every spring on Grandpa's farm, Grandma lined the kids up at the kitchen table and gave them the bitter herbs, same as the animals got. You hated it. You cried every year, he said. But you all did it, and nobody thought twice. Then you moved to the city and married Dad, and I guess it just stopped. Then he told me the thing I haven't been able to stop thinking about. "Killing them was never the hard part," he said. "Getting them out is. If they die where they are, they rot where they are. That's what happened to that woman on your TV show." He explained it the way Grandma explained it to him. These things build a slimy film around themselves and their eggs, so most cleanses only kill some of the grown ones. The eggs hatch a few weeks later and it starts over. You need the old bitter herbs all at once. Wormwood for the grown ones. Black walnut for the young. Clove for the eggs. Oregano so they can't settle back in. And pumpkin seed, which is the one he made me promise to remember, because it makes them lose their grip and pass out whole instead of dying where they are. And it has to be in oil, he said, or your stomach eats it before it gets anywhere. Aunt June uses one called Holior. Softgels, all of that pressed in oil. You take three in the morning before you eat. I ordered it that same day. I won't tell you about the first few days. You'd make that face you used to make. I'll just say this. Things came out of me that I'll never describe to another living person. And I sat on the edge of the bathtub and cried, Mom. Not because it was awful, although it was. Because it was out. Whatever it was, it wasn't sitting inside me anymore. It was a few weeks later when I really knew. It was a Friday. The girls and I were at our sushi place, and I ate a whole dinner and didn't get up from the table once. No cramping. No checking where the bathroom was. No hand pressed to my stomach under the table. Jenny looked at me halfway through and said, "Mom, you're laughing like Grandma used to." I had to excuse myself after all. But that time it was so I could cry in the bathroom for a happy reason. I still get my screenings. I always will. You'd want me to, and I'll never let anyone tell me those don't matter, because they do. But I don't lie awake at 3 a.m. anymore with my hand on my stomach. I don't hear that voice every time something twinges. I think you'd be relieved. I think you'd also say "I told you to eat some toast." I miss you every day. I'm going to be around a long time to keep missing you. Love always, Your daughter If you've read this far, two things. First: if your stomach hurts and something feels wrong, get screened. Please. Especially if cancer runs in your family. That's what kept me sane enough to look further. Second: if your screenings come back clean and the pain doesn't go away, don't stop there like I almost did. Holior is buy 2, get 1 free right now with a 30-day money-back guarantee. I got the extra for my sister. Killing them is only half the job. If what you're taking doesn't get them out whole, it isn't finished. It's just quiet.