Today, I had my routine six-week visit with my oncologist. For every three months with Dr. T, I have a CT scan and blood test. At other times, I routinely have just a blood test.

When I have the blood test, they are looking at the C-19 marker to determine any issues associated with my pancreatic cancer.

So, it was a bit of a surprise to me earlier today when I met with Dr. T and he said, “Regarding the blood test you had last week, I have some good news and some bad news.”

I caught my breath. “Well, let’s have it.”

“Derek, if you look at your blood test, page one and most of page two is good news. But do you see anything unusual on the report?”  He handed the blood test report to me and I looked at it. Frankly, it was just medical report gobbledygook. Certainly, it would be a stretch to call this anything remotely close to English.

“Look at the bottom of page 2,” he said.

I saw at the bottom that there was a negative for the C27 antigen, not the c19.

‘I thought you checked the c19 antigen, right?”

“Yes. That’s the bad news,” Dr. T said.

“What bad news?”

“The lab company made a mistake. They should have checked for the c19 antigen, but they checked for the c27 antigen instead. Our mistake,” he said.

‘And?”

“And, this is a routine test to determine breast cancer,” he said, somewhat stoically.

‘Well, that’s not bad news. It strikes me that you’ve just cleared me of any symptoms of breast cancer,” I said.

I walked out of the office feeling pretty damn good.