Celebrating the Hands That Saved Me

Today, I celebrated the gift of my surgeon, Dr. Greg Midis.

I took a cake to his office. Magpie’s lemon raspberry. Layer upon layer of spongy cake and buttercream frosting deliciousness. It was quite tasty, and it made Dr. Midis smile.

He was busy with other patients, but he poked his head into the consult room where I had holed up with my friends Gina Williams and Johanna Morales of the Thompson Cancer Survival Center Foundation. They were there to share the moment and document it for social media. It goes with the territory in my role as chair for the Subway Race Against Cancer, which benefits Thompson’s community outreach programs.
 
I told him I was celebrating the third anniversary of my surgery. More specifically, I wanted to honor the moment he came into my hospital room to tell us the good news about the pathology report.

“I’m not supposed to be here,” I said, as we posed for a photo. 

“That was the good Lord’s work,” he said.

“It’s amazing,” he said, “what patients remember about our conversations. You’re fighting cancer and something I say sticks, whether it’s encouraging or discouraging.”

“My book’s title is from a conversation we had,” I said. “I told you I was training for a marathon. You said, ‘A marathon is hard but you have cancer, there’s nothing harder than that.'”

Dr. Midis looked at me and smiled. Then headed down the hallway to visit his patients. He had lives to save.