Fear.
It's a human response to prime you for fight or flight. Not being a MD I guess it speeds up your reflexes and sharpens your focus. I've felt real fear only a few times in my life, like in my young wilder days running around D.C. with the wrong crowd doing things that we weren't supposed to be dong, in a part of town we weren't supposed to be in, when a gun went off in my face at 2am in the morning, or later in my settled married life when my son John was 12 years old and got hit by a car while ridings bike. The mad rush to the hospital after getting the call, with he the worst case scenarios going through my mind. But all that was needed was a cast for broken leg.
But now I feel real fear again, and there's nothing I can do. There's nobody I can shoot back at. My better half, and I do mean better half, Karen, has been diagnosed with breast cancer and it's a helpless feeling that I have to rely on others now. Doctors, MRI tech's, people I don't know. Having been a stubborn and self reliant cuss, I don't do well relying on others. Surgery is scheduled for next week, and all I can do is just stand by. This woman is more than a wife's he's been a best friend, lover, shooting buddy, and a few times my co-conspirator. I really think she saved my life from the wild and sometimes dumbo I was in my younger days to a real person. Now after a lifetime together, I'm unable to see any kind of life without her.
I hate fear. I know I've got a sometimes pugnacious personality, and I don't handle inaction well. I want to reach across a desk and clobber the enemy, try to break a blackthorn stick over some skull, or shoot something. But theres no enemy I can confront. A disease leaving nothing to strike against for the layman, so I have to rely on some doctors that we don't know, to get my wife through this. The surgeon and oncologist all seem like nice people, but this is just another job to them.
It's going to be a hard time.