THE POWER OF BACON

It's been a while since I wrote a story. This is mostly factual and yes...I'm Emma. I just wanted to be someone other than myself for a moment.

THE POWER OF BACON

Emma reached for her latte and sipped the hot, milky liquid as she gazed over the sparkling Indian Ocean. It was a beautiful day despite a little chill still in the air. It obviously wasn't quite summer yet unless of course you owned a wetsuit, in which case it was summer all year long.

The arrival of food stopped her rambling thoughts. Luckily for her it was still breakfast time and she could get a bacon and egg sandwich.As usual in times of stress she reverted to the " bacon fixes everything" notion, held by everyone in her family from nanna downwards. Broke up with someone?Smashed your car? Lost your job? Bacon was her family's version of a Maccas run...a piggy bandaid that fixed all.

But bacon wasn't going to fix the problems Emma had and she knew it. No amount of yummy piggy was going to help find out what was wrong with her daughter or make her feel better about what was going on. Tomorrow would come whether she ate bacon or not.

Tomorrow was a test. Another test on top of the hundreds of tests her daughter had already had...in a new area...in her thyroid gland. Emma choked back the sobs. She hated seeing what her daughter was going through and hated feeling that in some way this was her fault. Her fault because unbeknown to her at the time, she had passed on a faulty gene.

The bacon was delicious, not too salty and not too crunchy. If only her life would take a leaf out of bacon's book and be not too complicated, she thought to herself.

Below the cafe window, the wetsuit wearing few had ventured into the water with their boards. It was quite the sight and one she never tired of. She wondered how her daughter was feeling and if she really understood what a biopsy entailed. Memories of her own two biopsies long forgotten were suddenly crystal clear once more, as was the surgery which followed.

" You don't have thyroid cancer" said the doctor gruffly, two weeks later. " You look disappointed", he continued.

Instant relief merged quickly with a type of anger she had never experienced before. Her husband felt it too and held onto her hand tightly.

Even now years later Emma felt her shackles rise. What sort of a doctor tells a patient she looks disappointed not to have cancer? What sort of a doctor confuses a bewildered look with a disappointed look. She had convinced herself it was cancer like her sister had. She certainly wasn't disappointed to be wrong...just bewildered why she had been let off and her sister hadn't.

But she hadn't really been let off had she , because seven years later the word thyroid had resurfaced. Just like the word nodule had resurfaced. Just like the statistics had resurfaced. Except this time...it was her daughter's turn and she could do nothing but look bewildered once more and experience emotional pain far greater than her own situation had ever given her.

The bacon was finished and the latte dregs had turned cold. Emma reached to her neck and followed the large incision that told the world she was thyroid less. She remembered how ignorant people had said she tried to take her own life. She remembered how they laughed when they found out they were wrong and how they told the story anyway.

The surfers returned to shore as Emma paid for her late breakfast and walked to her car. She willed the nodule on her young daughters neck to be benign, to be not important, to be much ado about nothing, to be a storm in a teacup. She willed the experience to be over and done with and for her daughter's doctor to be kind in soul and spirit.

There was only one other thing she could do. She would make her daughter bacon and eggs for breakfast. Nanna would have approved.

THE END