It seems like the medical profession—and most businesses, really—are controlled by lawyers. Meaning everything they say and do is evasive and defensive, meant to prevent or deflect liability. I think it’s why doctors will never come out and directly say what they think is wrong with you. “Yes, I see the shattered bone sticking out of your leg, but let’s get that X-ray to be sure.”

Well, lucky me, I found the one doctor in the world who tells it like it is. I lifted up my shirt and she said, “Oh, yeah, that’s cancer.” She shaved the top of it off and sent it for biopsy anyway, because that’s what they do. But they called yesterday and said, “Yeah, it’s basal cell carcinoma. Come in and we’ll dig it out.”

Okay, they didn’t say ‘dig it out,’ but that’s essentially what will happen on Friday. Dig it out and hope for the best. But they say if you insist on having cancer, basal cell carcinoma is a “good” one to have. I don’t know about that. Would I rather have an angry spot on my skin than, like, liver cancer? Well, yes. But still.

It might be only the older among us who freak out when we hear the word cancer. For good reason, I suppose. 50 years ago if your melanoma spread, there was basically no chance of you surviving. Now, melanoma, even when it has spread, is easily survivable, and often ‘curable.’

Mine hasn’t spread. As far as I’m aware, anyway. They’re going to do a full-body scan to check me for other spots after they excise this gross thing on my back. Here’s hoping they don’t find anything else, but if they do, here’s hoping I’ll benefit from all those medical advances. And from being fortunate enough to still have health insurance.

Ayin always says they envy my positive or optimistic attitude. Hmm. Well, I feel like I do have a positive attitude, but I don’t know. Maybe it’s avoidance. Like, ‘Hey, I’m just going to assume everything will work out, because it usually does.’ Or not ruminating about potentially bad things that I have no control over. Putting them out of my mind.

I know for a fact that putting them out of my mind is how I’ve dealt with shitty things all my life. I don’t know if that’s necessarily a bad thing. I mean, we can’t change the past. How does it benefit me to think about something awful that’s happened to me? Those things are there. I’m not blocking them out and pretending they didn’t happen. I just don’t think about them for no reason. But I recognize that I do that as a survival mechanism.

So I don’t think about what will happen on Friday. It’s there at the back of my mind because it’s an appointment I have to go to. Like a dentist or doctor checkup or whatever. But I’m not spending time on the ‘what ifs.’ If they find more, I’ll deal with it. Everything will work out, because it usually does.

It’s kind of ironic that I don’t dwell on what ifs, because I do ‘what if’ a lot of everyday things. Like if I have to go somewhere I’ve never been — girl, I’m on Google Maps looking at how to get there, what the building looks like, where I can park, what the reviews say…it’s a bit much, but I still do it. Every time.

Sometimes I have to remind myself that 40 years ago, on a whim, I got into my wobbly little ’76 Honda Civic with a few other Venice Beach bums and ne’er-do-wells and drove to Mexico without even a hint of a plan, let alone a cell phone (because they didn’t exist). So, yeah, I can probably go down the hill to Staples without having to plan every turn.

But hey, if science is going to give us a tool that allows us to see into our near future, who wouldn’t use it? If Google could tell me what’s going to happen after Friday, I’d be all over it.

But it can’t, so here we are, not sweating the details and assuming everything will be okay. Which it probably will be.

(It’s funny that a 10-year-old car was a breath away from the scrap heap in the mid-80s, but now Ayin and I drive 18 and 20-year-old Hondas every day, and they’re perfectly fine. They don’t build them like they used to – and that’s a good thing.)

WRITTEN BY A HUMAN