I don't have hundreds of friends, not even on Facebook. But in the past three weeks, it seems that way too many of my small circle have been hit by pain and suffering.

• Two friends lost their mothers to illness.
• My brother-in-law (husband to one of Jim's sisters) lost a brother to suicide.
• One of the bridesmaids in our wedding was diagnosed with Stage IV colon cancer.
• The "trail walks leader" at our shelter was attacked and severely injured by a dog that had just arrived at the shelter.

Religion might be helpful right now, but I abandoned that nearly two decades ago, with assistance from the Sisters of Mercy. Instead of the word of God, I now read poetry when sorrow arrives.

But mostly I just stand in the dark field,

in the middle of the world, breathing 

in and out. Life so far doesn't have any other name

but breath and light, wind and rain. 

from "What Is There Beyond Knowing" by Mary Oliver 

Pit bull girl no more

When you don't have a job, it seems as though you have to craft an identity for yourself, a response to the inevitable "And what do you do?" at parties. A big piece of my self-image for the last two years came from being a member of the shelter team that took long-termers--mostly pit bulls and pit mixes--on two-mile group walks. Team membership is limited to the best dog handlers among the many volunteers who work with the shelter's canine population.

I liked the image of myself as a tough, middle-aged woman who could walk two pit bulls at at time; it counteracted the reserved, ex-librarian stereotype. I've been jumped on, leaned on, slobbered on, and given extravagant kisses by pit bulls. But as much as I love pits, I never lost sight of the fact that they are physically strong and--if untrained, as many dogs who end up in shelters are--can be strong-willed.

Last Saturday, one of my charges was acting out. For the first time on these walks, I feared for my own and both dogs' safety, particularly since we were near a busy street. Curiously, the other team members, including the staffer who leads the group, just continued walking while I tried to get the female pit bull under control. Eventually the entire group was out of sight. By the time they finally realized I wasn't with them, I had been nipped repeatedly and the dog who was behaving (sort of) had blood streaming out of one of his eyes. It was a horrific experience that could have been averted if even one other person on the team had offered me some assistance.

I resigned from the team the next day, losing a piece of myself in the process.

A taste of the future?

In the past 17 days, I've had a physical, an ultrasound, a biopsy (benign), and, just to top things off, stomach flu. I also have a fistful of referrals for various medical procedures (mammogram, colonoscopy, bone scan, carotid artery scan). Jim has been home for the last two days with a bad cold. Our conversation has centered around health-related topics.

It's beginning to feel like an old folks' home, and I'm not talking one of those active lifestyle retirement communities.

Irish literary humor

Earlier in the week, I took a break from (hopefully needless and definitely obssessive) online reading about thyroid cancer and purchased a subscription to the London Review of Books so that I could catch up on the annual publication of Alan Bennett's diary for the preceding 12 months. (In addition to the print version, the subscriber gets online access to the Review's archives.)

Following my biopsy this morning, I treated myself to reading Bennett's 2010 diary. He made me laugh for the first time in days with this anecdote:

I pass the house in Fitzroy Road with the blue plaque saying that Yeats lived there . . .

It was this house where Eric Korn heard someone reading out the plaque as being to ‘William Butler Yeast’. ‘Presumably,’ Eric wanted to say, ‘him responsible for the Easter Rising.'

Love in Renaissance Flanders

I loved the work of the 15th century Flemish painter Jan Van Eyck long before we moved to Belgium. I'm particularly fond of his portrait of a young couple, Giovanni and Giovanna Arnolfini, and of Robert Lowell's spot-on description of the pair in his poem "Marriage."

They are rivals in homeliness and love;

her hand lies like china in his,

her other hand

is in touch with the head of her unborn child.

They wait and pray,

as if the airs of heaven

that blew on them when they married

were now a common visitation . . .

Medically induced crankiness

I really liked the internist I found when we moved to Colorado. Dr. B. was smart, funny, and had a great bedside manner. Unfortunately, she moved back to Virginia to care for her elderly mother.

Dr. B. was replaced in the two-person practice by the newly minted Dr. H. Although I would have felt more comfortable seeing middle-aged Dr. K., when I called for an appointment for my 2010 annual physical, the receptionist said that I had to schedule it with Dr. H.

Someone has to give these young doctors a chance, I thought.

Dr. H. was pleasant and brisk during appointments. She correctly diagnosed a horrendous rash I had earlier this year as a drug allergy. But after calling me on Tuesday to report that I needed a thyroid biopsy, she (or her staff) dropped the ball. I never heard from the practice's referral staff or from the hospital where the biopsy will be performed.

I finally called Dr. H.'s office this morning. The biopsy order had never been sent, which made me hit the roof. One of the MAs said that she'd fax it immediately--marked "URGENT"--to the hospital. She also gave me a number to call to schedule the biopsy.

I waited half an hour for the fax to go through and then called that number. It was the wrong number.

When I was transferred to the correct number, they had not received the fax from my internist, nor could they schedule an appointment without it. They asked where the films of the ultrasound were, and I had to report that I had no idea if they were at my internist's office or the imaging center. Apparently the diagnostic radiologist has to actually see the films first in order to determine if s/he can even do a biopsy.

I know that the chances of my thyroid nodes being cancerous are small. But after losing family and friends to various forms of cancer, even the chance of it is unsettling. Uncertainty is not my best milieu, and the hassle of trying to resolve that uncertainty (i.e., just getting the biopsy scheduled) is raising my blood pressure, one of the few health measures I can report is in perfect condition.

I feel bad about my neck thyroid

During a routine physical on Monday, my internist, Dr. H, dragged me over to the full-length mirror in the exam room. "Can you see it?" she demanded.

I mumbled, "Yes," although the only thing I really saw was the big red mark she left on my neck from her examination of my thyroid.

Which is how I found myself immediately after my physical at a diagnostic imaging center having a thyroid ultrasound. Fortunately that didn't involve drinking gallons of water and "holding it," as I had to do for ultrasounds during my pregnancy. Unfortunately, after holding my head back for 35 minutes in a position that would fully expose my thyroid for the ultrasound, I had a stiff neck.

Dr. H, who's only a few years out of med school and needs some practice in giving patients potentially bad news, called yesterday with the test results. There are four growths on my thyroid, one of them "pretty big." So next up on my calendar of things to look forward to (right behind that trip to Paris in the fall) is a needle biopsy of the cells that have invaded my thyroid.

If you had asked me just a week ago to point out my thyroid, it would have like asking me to point out the exact spot of Morocco on a map of Africa. I know it's on the continent's north coast, and then I get a little fuzzy. But I can guarantee that after that needle biopsy, I'll know exactly where my thyroid is.