And so the story goes….

(too see the first part of this story go to Miracles Make Things Go Away).

I peeled off Addison’s clothes and laid him on an exam table. He looked like a doll in a dentist’s chair. The ultrasound doctor put a pile of scratchy paper towels over his penis because she was afraid he’d pee when the cold jelly was rubbed on his belly.

The last time we’d been in this room, we found out Addison had two cysts on the bile ducts (those little tubes that drain liver liquid into the colon). At one month, the surgeon said he’d another surgery at four months. We pushed the first look at the cysts to nine months. But the prognosis was gloom and doom: without surgery, Addison would get cancer.

The doctor moved the wand over Addison’s belly. She’d push under his ribs, then explored below the belly button and over to his sides. This went on for about ten minutes. Addison lay patiently, looking at me as if I’d handed him over to aliens for inspection. The words I feared the most echoed in the room, as if they’d stayed there awaiting our return: cancer, surgery, cysts do not go away on their own, cancer, cancer, cancer.

They’re not there,

said the doctor without looking away from the screen.

I pushed my tongue against the roof of my mouth to stop the tingle of tears and screams of joy.

I can’t find the cysts anywhere.

I dressed Addison. The doctor handed me the ultrasound printout. We left the building.

The pediatrician was overjoyed about the ultrasound. She told me the ultrasound doctor wanted to tip Addison upside down to see if the cysts were hiding somewhere she couldn’t see.

That’s what I always say about medicine, she said as we put Addison on the scale.
you just never know.

But I knew. I knew it all along. And, so did Addison. To us, this was nothing out of the ordinary.