Life is what happens when you are making other plans

Just before Thanksgiving, I finally pulled the trigger and retired from corporate life. I was ready, and it felt earned, although I didn’t fully realize how ready until I stepped into this new season. To my surprise, the transition felt natural, even easy. It’s been a world of possibility and opportunity. And more than once in these past few months, I’ve caught myself wondering how on earth I ever found the time to work all those years!

The first couple of months were filled with holiday preparations, parties, and get-togethers, so I told myself my true “new normal” would begin after the New Year. Bible in a Year. Writing daily again – without worrying about offending anyone in my professional sphere. A more consistent workout routine. I had a long list of intentions. I was also genuinely looking forward to something so simple: planning meals, shopping for them during the week, and preparing dinner without the exhaustion of back-to-back meetings draining every bit of energy by the end of the day.

Then, one night toward the end of January, after I had made dinner for us – including my mom, who had come to stay for about three weeks – everything shifted.

I began having terrible abdominal cramping. The pain started just under my breastbone and radiated outward, tightening like a boa constrictor around my diaphragm. At first it came in waves. I assumed it was another episode of what I had been calling reflux, so I told my mom and my husband I was going upstairs to take some dicyclomine and try to sleep. That had worked for the occasional bouts I’d experienced over the past couple of years.

But this time was different. Nothing brought relief. The waves turned into near-constant, throbbing pain. I couldn’t find a position that didn’t hurt. Around 3:00 a.m., I finally woke my husband and said, “I think we need to go to the ER.”So we did.

We live in a small town on the Texas coast, and there isn’t a full-service community hospital here. We do have a beautiful, modern standalone ER affiliated with the hospital system in Corpus Christi. I was taken to a room immediately. After checking my vitals and asking a few questions, the first thing the doctor said was, “Do you still have your gallbladder?”

“Yes,” I replied.

He nodded and said he’d have the nurse give me something for the pain and then order a CT scan.Oh great, I remember thinking. I really don’t have time for this. And neither does my husband.

The morphine kicked in, and for the first time in hours I could unclench every muscle in my body. They wheeled me back for the scan, injected the contrast, and within minutes it was over. Soon I was back in the room with my husband. Without the pain consuming me, we could finally talk. We both assumed they would tell us to head to Corpus Christi and schedule gallbladder surgery as soon as possible.

But time kept passing.

The nurse came in periodically to check on me, but we were growing impatient waiting for the doctor to return with a plan. Eventually, he came back in. “We’ve been consulting with several specialists,” he said. “They’ve confirmed our initial assessment that you need a higher level of care than we can provide here, even locally. Your gallbladder is severely inflamed and definitely needs to come out. But there are other findings on the CT that are very concerning. We recommend you seek care immediately. Just tell us where you’d like to go… San Antonio, Corpus Christi, Austin…”

My husband stopped him.

“Wait. What do you mean by concerning? What are we talking about?”

The doctor paused.

“Cancer.”

Ifelt the brakes screech in my head – and through my entire body.

What?

My husband leaned back in his chair and reached for my hand. “Cancer?” The doctor was careful. “We can’t confirm anything like that here,” he said, “but there are findings that concern us. And your blood work, which you say has always been normal, is also… alarming.”

My husband didn’t hesitate. “If that’s what we’re worried about, then we want to go to M.D. Anderson.” “Great choice,” the doctor replied. “We’ll call and get you pre-admitted.” Within minutes, a nurse came in to tell us there was already a bed waiting. Initially, they insisted I would need to be transported by ambulance – a three-hour ride, with the ambulance coming from Houston. But I finally convinced the doctor it would be far more efficient for us to go home, pack a few things, and drive straight there rather than sit for hours waiting.

And just like that, everything shifted into motion.

Dave immediately moved into command-and-control mode. We stopped at home so he could wake my poor mother – who had been sleeping soundly until my call – and gently explain that her “vacation” was about to look very different. We called our usual dog sitter, who thankfully could come later that day. We texted two of our Houston friends to ask if Dave and Mom could stay with them after I got settled. They opened their doors without hesitation. We threw a few things into bags and got on the road.

The drive to Houston felt surreal. Surely this is some kind of mistake, I kept thinking, as Alanis Morissette’s “Ironic” looped in my head.

Dave was stoic, as he so often is, focused entirely on the mission: get me safely to the hospital.

I couldn’t stop thinking about my mother. Of course she was worried about me – her firstborn, who had somehow gone from five years old to retirement age in what must have felt like the blink of an eye. And now here we were, the three of us, each lost in our own thoughts during that long three-hour drive.

We texted only a very small circle of people, letting them know what was happening and asking for their prayers. I didn’t want to tell everyone when we didn’t even know what we were dealing with. I didn’t want people worrying unnecessarily if there was, in fact, nothing to worry about.

But we know too many friends who have spent far too much time at M.D. Anderson. In Texas, when you hear someone is there – or has an appointment there – you don’t ask what’s wrong. You just know.

After a career spent in healthcare-adjacent roles – pharmaceutical, clinical research, healthcare technology sales – I had walked the halls of prestigious hospitals like MDA all over the country. I’d been fortunate to meet and learn from thought leaders in epidemiology, cardiology, psychiatry, and yes, oncology. I thought I understood how the system worked. I thought I understood what “patient-centered care” meant.

I was wrong.

I had never experienced it as the patient, as the woman who had just been told she might have cancer. And that reality hit me as we pulled into the sprawling medical complex. This time, we weren’t looking for “Visitor Parking,” we were looking for “Admissions.” For a place called “Acute Oncology Care.”

Even now, my stomach sinks when I think about it.

And yet, from the moment I stepped inside, I was met with extraordinary calm and competence. It felt almost like being welcomed by the concierge team at a five-star hotel – albeit a sterile, enormous, and incredibly complex one. After giving my name once, everyone seemed to know it (even though regulations required them to ask for my name and birthdate before every interaction).

I handed them the CD with my CT scan from the ER.

“Thank you so much,” they said. “We already have it.” I was quickly taken to a room, and given a gown and a bag for my clothes. Within minutes, they had placed two IV ports in my arms. After a brief interview with the admitting team, I was assigned a room:

G1107.

Once I was settled in, the care team greeted us as though they had been expecting us for days. Every nurse, tech, housekeeper, and social worker introduced themselves by their first names. They wrote messages on the whiteboard, tracked my vitals there, and explained everything they were doing.

As surreal and frightening as it all felt with my mind still trying to catch up to the reality of the previous twelve hours, there was nothing cold or clinical about the people who would become like family to us over the next several days. I could write pages about them.

In all my years working in healthcare-adjacent industries, I have never witnessed service – patient care – like this. It was astonishing. I would list names, but inclusion inevitably means exclusion, and I couldn’t bear to leave anyone out.

Not long after we arrived, the first of many physicians came in. They would schedule a more comprehensive, higher-resolution CT scan for early Saturday morning. After that, likely an endoscopy. And then…my mind drifted. If it was going to require that much, I wasn’t ready to follow that train of thought. I’ll think about that later, I told myself.

Late Friday afternoon, we realized the world had continued spinning while ours had tilted on its axis. Houston was forecast to receive significant ice storms beginning Sunday morning. M.D. Anderson would shift into a kind of lockdown starting Saturday at 7:00 p.m. From that point until Tuesday morning, no one would be allowed to leave, and no one would be allowed to enter.

The room had a small pull-out couch, barely large enough for one person. There was no chance my mother was going to leave me there alone. So, we began figuring out our plan.

In the midst of all of this, the first of several surgeons came to see me. He was calm, confident, and direct. Standing at the foot of my bed, he asked me to walk him through how I had ended up there. After I finished, he nodded.

“The good news is that your bloodwork has improved significantly overnight. That’s encouraging. We’ll do the CT scan tomorrow and see what we see. I look at cancer every single day. I know what cancer looks like. You don’t look like cancer.” He paused. “That’s not a diagnosis. But this is a lot to take in, and I don’t want you worrying unless there’s something to worry about. Your gallbladder will likely need to come out, but I would be surprised if it’s anything more than that. And if it is, you’re in the best place in the world for it.”

Then, practically: “We’re going into lockdown tomorrow night, so regardless of what the scan shows, nothing will happen until at least Tuesday. For now, change out of that gown. Put on real clothes. Walk the halls. Move. Don’t think of yourself as a patient. I’ll come back after we have the results. Try to get some sleep.”

It felt like we all exhaled for the first time in twenty-four hours.

Dave and my mom left to stay with our friends — a kindness I will never forget. I was grateful they could step away from the hospital and decompress.

When the room grew quiet, I let my guard down. I had been trying to stay strong for my mother. I didn’t want her more frightened than she already was. I didn’t want Dave carrying any more worry than he already held. But alone in that room, the weight of it all began to settle in.

I tried to read. I couldn’t focus. I turned off the television. I sat in the stillness and wondered what, exactly, I should be praying for. Sometime just before midnight, another physician came in and introduced himself. I wish I could remember his name. He asked gently if I had any questions, if there was anything I needed. A wave of emotion rose up without warning. I looked at him.

“Why am I here? How did this happen?” And then I lost it.

In my experience, the very best physicians know when to stop being clinical and measured, and simply allow a patient to be afraid. That is what this doctor did that night. Almost instinctively, he sat down beside me on the hospital bed and put his arm around me in the most natural, unforced way. He didn’t rush to fill the silence. He just let me cry until I could begin to steady myself.

When I finally caught my breath, he spoke gently. “I don’t know the answers to those questions. But here’s what I do know. Whatever brought you here, we will find out. You are in the best place in the world to get the answers you need. And no matter what those answers are, you are surrounded by the best people, who will take the very best care of you.”

I nodded, sniffled, and buried my face in the tissues he had quietly handed me during my unraveling. “I also know,” he added carefully, “that you won’t have to look very far around here to find people who would give anything for your uncertainty.” There was no judgment in his voice. No attempt to shame me. No false reassurance. Just perspective, delivered with compassion. He was right. And I knew he was right. I thanked him and tried to sleep between the rhythm of vitals checks and what I had already begun to call the “bloodlettings.”

Dave and my mom returned early the next morning. It was Saturday, and the skies had opened up. Their drive back to the medical center had been harrowing. Inside, the tone of the hospital was shifting. Teams were rotating out; others were preparing to stay through the storm. The nurses explained that cots had been set up throughout the complex. They would sleep there in shifts over the next seventy-two hours. Meals would be provided, though some had brought their own food. I was struck by how calm they were. One young nurse told us she had volunteered to stay because she was single and didn’t have children. She wanted to help her colleagues who did.

 In the end, we decided my mom would remain with me at the hospital, and Dave would drive home to secure the house — cover the faucets, protect the garden, bring in the plants — and manage whatever needed attention there. As the surgeon had said, nothing was going to happen until at least Tuesday.

After I returned from the CT scan, we waited. We waited. And we waited. Eventually, Dave decided to get on the road before the weather worsened. I promised to call the moment we heard anything. We were cautiously optimistic. Mom and I took short walks around the unit, my IV pole rolling faithfully beside us. I was becoming quite adept at maneuvering it.

Finally, a young physician came in. “The CT scan was inconclusive,” he said. “We’ll need to run additional tests.” The small lift of buoyancy I’d been carrying all day dropped instantly — like an anvil settling on my chest.

“Inconclusive?” I asked.

He walked to the whiteboard and began sketching a simple outline of the liver, gallbladder, and pancreas, and how they connect through the bile ducts. He circled the area where the pancreas meets the bile duct. “We’re concerned about some thickening here,” he explained.

The word pancreas felt like an airhorn in my ears. So that’s what they were worried about in the ER, I thought. That’s why the doctor took both of my hands before he left his shift and told me he would be praying for me.

The young physician said the care team would determine next steps and that he’d return the following day with more information.  I looked at my mom.  We were both deflated. “ I didn’t like his attitude,” she whispered. “Me neither,” I said. “But I think it wasn’t his attitude as much as what he was saying.” We sat quietly, each lost in our own thoughts. Then our favorite tech – a young man who had become something like a surrogate grandson over the past few days, thanks to his ebullient and irreverent commentary, popped into the room. “Uh oh. What’s going on in here?” he asked, reading the mood instantly. We gave him the Cliff’s Notes version.“Well,” he said with a shrug, “they still don’t know anything for sure. Let’s see what else happens.”

Not long after, the surgeon we had liked so much the day before returned. “How are you feeling?” he asked.

“I’d feel better if that CT scan had been more conclusive.”

“I would too,” he admitted. His confidence remained, but the easy optimism from the day before had softened. “We’ll get an MRI as soon as we can and continue watching your labs. I won’t be here during lockdown, but we’ll develop a plan. We’re going to figure this out. Keep moving. Stay positive. You’re in the best place in the world to sort this out.”

After he left, I called Dave. I could tell he had been holding onto the same cautious hope I had — that the scan would settle everything and we could move forward. When I told him the results were inconclusive, I heard the emotion break through his steadiness. He was too shaken to even make a small joke, which is usually how we navigate hard things – lightening the load for each other with laughter, sometimes morbid humor.

I knew he wished he had been there with me. But in hindsight, there was something sacred about that separation. Him alone at home with the dogs and his thoughts. Me in the hospital with mine. We didn’t need to perform strength for each other. We already knew.

That evening, I was finally cleared to eat solid food. I was ravenous. Because of the lockdown, the cafeteria sent identical meals to everyone – my mom and me included. Surprisingly, it was quite good. Sharing that simple dinner with her felt grounding.

Flipping through the TV guide, I saw Baby Boom with Diane Keaton scheduled to air. My mom had never seen it, and it had been one of my favorites during those early, heady years or my career, when I was calling on a major pharmaceutical company in New York City and felt certain I was making my way in the world. It was the perfect balm. For two hours, we were somewhere else entirely. It eased the sharp edges of the day and helped us both sleep.

Later that evening, Dave and I exchanged text messages that felt more vulnerable and heartfelt than anything we had said to each other in a long time. Not because our relationship isn’t strong – we truly are best friends – but because we had never been forced to imagine life without the other. “We’ll get through this together,” he texted. “I know we will,” I replied.

Sunday morning arrived, but the terrible storm never did. The nurses shrugged. “You can never be too careful. It could have been much worse. Looks like Austin is getting the brunt of it. Better safe than sorry.”

Since we knew nothing significant would happen clinically that day, we settled into a strange kind of suspended time. We walked the halls. We read. We tried to rest. The first physician visit came from the same young doctor as the day before. He explained, matter-of-factly, that I would likely undergo an endoscopy the following day. I nodded and quietly resigned myself to it. Not long after he left, my head nurse burst into the room, practically glowing.

“Did they tell you?!” she asked.

“Tell me what?”

“All of your bloodwork this morning is perfect. P-E-R-F-E-C-T! I am so happy!”

I jumped up and hugged her. “What do you think that means?” She laughed. “I have no idea. But right now, as far as I can tell, you are the most normal, healthy patient I’ve seen all day, so let’s just hold on to that for a while, honey.”

“But the doctor said I need an endoscopy.”

“Maybe you do,” she said. “But let’s not borrow trouble. Let’s praise Jesus and have a wonderful day.” Her optimism and her faith were contagious.

A few hours later, the room shifted again. Another surgeon entered, followed by three young women in scrubs, typing notes into their laptops. Before he even spoke, I knew. This was going to be The Guy. He walked straight over to my mom, who was curled up in the recliner under a blanket while I sat on the couch in my Texas Longhorn sweats.

“Hello, Mrs. Moore,” he said warmly. My mom smiled. “I’m not the patient. She is,” she replied, pointing to me. His eyebrows shot up. “You are?” “Yes,” I said. “And believe me, if you had told me twenty years ago that at sixty-two I’d be staying in a hospital room with my eighty-seven-year-old mother, I would not have guessed I’d be the patient either.” We all laughed. He introduced himself, then leaned back casually against the foot of my hospital bed, crossed his arms, and looked directly into my eyes.

“Why don’t you tell me, in your own words…why are you here?”

I walked him through the entire story again. I answered his questions carefully. His team typed notes, occasionally glancing up and smiling when something lighthearted surfaced in the telling.

When I finished, he nodded. “That was very helpful. I’m glad you have such a strong understanding of what’s been happening.” Then he grew quiet for a moment, collecting his thoughts.

“Here’s what I think,” he said finally. “Your bloodwork is now completely back to normal. Yes, we’re seeing some thickening in the biliary tree, as you mentioned. But the MRI tomorrow will give us the clarity we need.”

“But the other doctor said I needed an endoscopy,” I said. He smiled slightly. “Here’s what you need to understand about how we think here. We look for cancer. We exist to find it and eliminate it. So our mindset is not, ‘I hope this isn’t cancer.’ Our mindset is, ‘If this is cancer, where is it hiding? Where did it come from? And how are we going to outsmart it?’ That’s how this entire institution operates, from top to bottom.”

He continued, “The gastrointestinal team is always going to lean toward doing an endoscopy. And we are always going to ask them to justify why it’s necessary, because those procedures carry their own risks. We don’t want to do them unless we truly need to.” He paused. “But here’s what I believe happened. I think you had an acute obstruction from a gallstone that temporarily blocked your bile duct. It was significant enough to inflame everything around it. That’s why your labs were so abnormal and why the imaging looked concerning. At some point, you likely passed the stone. Over the past day or two, your body has been healing itself.”

He looked directly at me.

“I don’t see anything in your history, your labs, your chart – or frankly, in you – that tells me this is cancer. And I look at cancer every single day.”

Another wave of relief washed over both my mom and me after the doctor and his team left the room. “Now that is more like it!” she declared. I laughed and couldn’t have agreed more. I called Dave and relayed the entire conversation. I could hear his spirits lift, just as I had felt them sink the night before. Hope was creeping back in. “I’ll be there as soon as I can tomorrow,” he said. What a roller coaster.

Mom and I turned our attention to the NFL playoff games, grateful for something ordinary to focus on. Our favorite tech kept popping in – officially to check my vitals, unofficially to check the scores.

“So what are they telling you today?” he asked.

I summarized the latest update.

“Well,” he said thoughtfully, “I’m not a doctor, but one guy with three fellows and laptops usually wins over the young guy by himself with paper notes.” I laughed because he was probably right. I also laughed because anyone who has spent time around medicine instantly recognizes the hierarchy. “That young guy with paper notes will eventually become the big guy with the fellows and laptops,” I said. “Yep,” he grinned. “That’s exactly how it works.”

Early Monday morning, one of those fellows came in and introduced herself. She would be managing my case under “The Guy’s” supervision. I told her how confident and fortunate I felt to have their team involved. She smiled. “Your doctor is not only a highly regarded surgeon,” she said, “he has a subspecialty in surgical oncology and a sub-subspecialty in hepatopancreatobiliary surgery. You have the perfect person evaluating your case.” She said it with unmistakable pride. Proud to learn from him, proud to be part of the team.

I told a doctor friend of mine that night that I felt like I had Michelangelo painting my fence. For the first time in days, I allowed myself a cautious optimism. It began to feel like this might be the beginning of the end of this chapter. And that felt very good.

As the hospital shifted back into normal operations, the backlog of postponed tests and procedures created a kind of organized chaos. Eventually, they came to wheel me down for the MRI. At first, the machine was loud and distracting. But as the scan continued, I was praying so intensely for a good outcome that I barely registered the noise.

When I was wheeled back to my room, Dave and Mom were waiting. We were told it would take some time for the team to review the images. In the meantime, because surgery was likely regardless of the findings, I was placed back on a “no solid food and tiny sips of water only” diet.

We waited. Finally, the surgeon and his fellow returned. I could see the relief on their faces before they even spoke. “We’re going to get you scheduled for gallbladder removal as soon as possible,” he said. “Things are a bit backed up, but we’ll get you in quickly. Be ready.”

“But what about the endoscopy?” I asked.

“Not needed,” he replied. “Like I told you Sunday, your body has returned to normal. But your gallbladder is inflamed and you have gallstones. Our recommendation is to remove it as soon as we can. If you’d prefer to have the surgery closer to home, we understand.”

Dave didn’t miss a beat. “We’re staying right here with the A team,” he said. They all laughed.

“Dr. Ortiz will go over the details with you,” the surgeon said. “I’ll see you as soon as we can get you in.”

Around 9:00 p.m., Dr. Ortiz, the fellow, returned to walk me through the surgical plan. She looked exhausted but was gracious and thorough. They hadn’t been able to fit me in that day, she apologized, but they were hopeful for tomorrow. So Tuesday became another waiting day. Dave and Mom found the complimentary laundry room. At M.D. Anderson, patients and families are referred to as “guests,” which somehow feels fitting. They washed the clothes we’d been living in. We packed our things, knowing that after surgery I would move to a post-surgical unit.

Finally, around 5:30 p.m., the orderlies arrived. “We’re here to take you to the OR.” It was go time.

They wheeled me down the hall, Dave and Mom walking alongside. In pre-op, we met the OR nurse, the surgical assistant, and the anesthesiologist. Every single person treated us with remarkable calm and respect.

Then it was time. Dave and Mom headed to the waiting area. I was wheeled back. I don’t remember anything after that. When I woke up, sore and groggy, the first thing I saw was the clock. It was nearly 10:00 p.m. When Dave and Mom came in to see me, I apologized for keeping them so late. I told them to go back to our friends’ house. The nurses made sure I was comfortable, and I drifted in and out of sleep. And that was that.

The next morning, I felt remarkably good. The nurse informed me that discharge required two things: a certain number of laps walked around the wing and proof that everything was functioning as it should. I was sore, but the heaviness that had settled over us days earlier was gone. Nothing would be absolutely confirmed until the final pathology report, but the tone had shifted. Everyone felt confident. The surgical aide reviewed my post-operative care and prescriptions. I was instructed to avoid alcohol and fatty foods for several weeks while my body adjusted to its new normal.

Once again, I was struck by the extraordinary care I had received — from the first moment in Acute Oncology Care to this final checklist before heading home. Eventually, I passed all the tests and was cleared to leave. We headed south. We headed home.

The entire experience, from the ER to the operating room to the quiet drive home, felt less like a medical episode and more like a spiritual reckoning. My recovery has been easier than expected, almost uneventful. I feel better than new.

As more than one person has said, “If M.D. Anderson tells you that you don’t have cancer, you can feel pretty confident you don’t have cancer.” And that is true.

Two weeks later, I had my follow-up appointment with the surgeon over Zoom. I knew how busy he was. I assumed I was just one more routine gallbladder case in a sea of far more serious diagnoses. In fact, I felt almost guilty walking out of that place with a clean bill of health, knowing so many others do not. As if he could read my thoughts, he smiled and said, “I am so happy that you do not have cancer. Do you realize how seldom I get to say that? I am so happy. And I hope you take this the way I mean it – go live a wonderful life. I don’t ever want to see you again.”

I laughed. “Okay,” I said, “but if I happen to run into you at Central Market, is it alright if I say hello?” He laughed too. “It would be my pleasure.”

I find myself thinking of this as the true beginning of my retirement, the official restart of the chapter that technically began just before Thanksgiving. The rhythm I had originally hoped to settle into is finally taking shape again. And this too-long story is, I hope, the first of many more reflections and observations to come.

Thank you for reading this far.

I am deeply grateful to God, to my husband, to my mother, to the rest of my family, and to those few friends we told, who prayed us through those uncertain days when we weren’t sure how brightly the sun would shine again.

A little more than a month later, it is shining very brightly indeed.