Node Overload.

Anxiety - a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome.

I will always remember the day when I experienced my first overwhelming anxiety disorder. Anxiety first crept into my life when I was twenty-nine years old after I was convinced I had cancer. It was the first time that I ever thought I was going to die. It was almost a quarter of a century before I was actually diagnosed with cancer and even when I had cancer I did not think I was going to die like I did back in the summer of 1989.

During my teenage years I had a friend who died of cancer and as it turns out his first symptom was a lump like mass on his neck. Perry was not a real close friend but he attended the same Kingdom Hall that I went to and he was around the same age as me. He wasn’t into sports or very athletic, but he was always eager to strap on the blades anytime I or anyone else rented the ice for our friendly hockey scrimmages. He always seemed to get very tired very fast and he would spend most of the hour just sitting on the bench resting. He was eventually diagnosed with cancer and died a short time after.

Fast forward to the summer of 1989 and I am playing baseball on the NWAA team. We are in Port Credit for a weekend tournament and we had just finished batting practice before taking the field for our first game. It was extremely hot that Saturday afternoon when I put a dab of suntan lotion on my bare hand before running out onto the field over to my usual position. Once at first base I began to rub the lotion on the back and all over my neck.

What the fuck?

I felt what was a hard lump under my ear on the right side of my neck. Almost immediately it triggered memories of my old friend Perry and that I too now had the same cancer that he had. I was terrified because just like Perry, I too was now going to die. My mind was such a blur, I was in a daze and my newly discovered lump was all I could think about. I could not wait for the game to end and I can’t even remember if we won or loss, I didn’t care. After the game I faked I was sick and took myself out of the lineup for the rest of the weekend.

I was now a total mess.

I spent the rest of that weekend at home; I couldn’t stop thinking about or touching my lump. I had myself convinced that I had an aggressive form of cancer as my lump felt like it was getting larger and harder with each touch. I would need to see a doctor and get confirmation as to how much longer I had to live. I would then need to get my affairs all in order because my wife Bonnie was soon to become a widow. I remember being relieved that we had no children so Bonnie wouldn’t have to raise them on her own.

During this time I was working for Beatrice Foods and also during this time walk-in clinics were sprouting up all over the city of Toronto. With hospital Emergency wards always so crowded and understaffed it was the perfect solution. Patients without a family doctor were now able to visit a doctor for non-emergency conditions. Although dealing with my lump was indeed an emergency to me, I knew it would not be deemed a life or death situation at Emergency so I decided I would visit a walk-clinic the first thing on Monday morning. I got very little sleep and I was an emotional wreck for the rest of that weekend.

On Monday morning I was downtown and before even making my first delivery I parked my truck and went inside the nearest clinic. It was just opening when I arrived at 8 am and I was the first patient to be seen. I was put inside an examination room where I waited for the doctor. Within five minutes an attractive female doctor arrived and asked me why I was there. I explained to her that I had a lump on my neck I wanted to have checked out. I told her I was afraid I might have cancer after relaying Perry’s story to her. She did not seem too concerned as she began to also check my arm pits and chest area. She then asked me to stand up and loosen my jeans, she proceeded to slide her gloved hand inside my undershorts and began touching my groin area. After she removed her hand and while taking off her glove she then asked me if I was a homosexual.

I was totally shocked by her question to which I had emphatically answered NO!

She explained that with the prevalence of AIDS rapidly spreading throughout Toronto’s gay community one of the early symptoms was the swelling of lymph nodes. Her ten minute examination ended with her surmising that I had a swollen lymph node caused by a minor infection most likely somewhere in my mouth or neck. She told me that it should go away on its own, but if it got painful I might need antibiotics and she also reassured me that I did not have cancer. I left the clinic and went on with the rest of my day although I could not stop touching my now newly diagnosed swollen lymph node on my neck.

Now for most normal people that would have been the end of it. However, if you have read some of my other memories there are many occasions where I have not reacted like any normal person would have.

And this memory would also be one of them.

Even though I had been checked out by a doctor I was still convinced I had cancer and I could not stop thinking that I was soon going to die. I just knew that I was going to end up like Perry and it scared the hell out of me. I now needed reassurance almost daily that I was going to die and I found myself visiting public libraries all over the city on my route. I spent hours reading and studying medical journals when I should have been working. I also purchased a medical encyclopedia with detailed descriptions of every type of cancer. I learned so much that even to this day I still consider myself a self-proclaimed expert on the workings of the human lymphatic system.

Seriously, ask me a question about human lymph nodes and I bet I could answer it.

As crazy has this might seem to the average person reading this what was even more crazier was that over a three month span I visited another twenty-two walk-in clinics throughout the city. Although no other doctor slid their hand inside my shorts like that first female doctor, every one of them reassured me that all I had was a swollen node and that I did not have cancer.

Over the following weeks I began to notice some swelling inside the back of my mouth on the same side as my swollen node. It was painful, red and looked like my gums had a blister inside. I grabbed my water-pik and blasted it with warm salty water. Within seconds I had a piece of something in my mouth and I spit it into the sink. It was now clearly obvious to me that I had dislodged a piece of a popcorn kernel from under my gums. I had not eaten popcorn for at least four months or around the same time as the summer Port Credit baseball tourney.

Within a couple weeks my lump on my neck completely disappeared and I was finally convinced that what those twenty-three doctors had told me was indeed true. I did not have cancer and I was not going to die. I was not going to end up like my old friend Perry afterall and I was so happy. It was such an unbelievable feeling to know I was still going to live.

As I write this story over three decades later I now find it a bit amusing how much I had overreacted to what turned out to be nothing more than a minor mouth sore. Although at the time there was nothing amusing about it and it was the one time I can recall when fear and anxiety had such a grip on my life that it had affected my mental health. Even when I was diagnosed with cancer in 2013 my anxiety was mild compared to what I went through during that summer back in 1989.

I could not imagine what people with chronic anxiety disorders must live with every single day. For me my anxiety went away almost as quickly as it appeared, but it still was a tough go for me to say the least. Living your life while being consumed and fixated on issues that for the most part you have no control over is not just a disorder it can also be an illness.

I know firsthand how mental illness can negatively affect both you and your family’s quality of life.