Those are the words I said, out loud, mind you, after ending a phone call with my husband around 9 AM on March 1.  It was a Wednesday.

I knew about 8:20 that things were taking longer than they should.  By 8:45, I knew things were really taking longer than they should.  So when I called him on my way to work after getting the kids on the bus for school, I was kinda bracing myself for not-so-great news – although not fully because no one ever really expects to hear the words.  He answered the phone and said (and I quote), “Well, it’s not good news, Min.”

Silence.

“What do you mean, ‘It’s not good news?'”

“Well, they’re waiting on one specific test to come back from a special lab in California, but he says he’s pretty sure it’s cancer.”

That “pretty sure” diagnosis by our primary doctor was taken up a notch at 6 PM when he called to let us know he’d been able to get us an appointment the following week with the particular oncologist he was hoping to get us in with.  Our primary doctor had sent over all the labs for the oncologist to read, and he had concurred with our doctor’s initial diagnosis.

So yeah, that was unexpected.

Statistically speaking, it had to happen to one of us.  One of our family, one of our friends, one of our colleagues.  But let’s be honest, we all think it’s going to happen twice in the next group over and just kinda skip ours.  Only this time it didn’t.