While running his fingers down the middle of his back, looking for the exact origin point of his nagging ache, and intending to dig his thumb into the muscle there, Walter’s fingers feel a small lump of tissue just to the left side of his spine.

He freezes, and suddenly a rush of recent memories flood into his mind, including an odd morning two days prior when his left leg had been numb upon waking.

He then considers whether he should ask his wife to look at the spot or if he should visit the doctor first, alone, to have it looked at, just in case it turns out to be nothing.

I once had a pilar cyst (not a big deal, as I later found out) on my back, that I discovered in this manner. In my case, I asked about it and was told it had always been there. I’d just somehow never noticed it because it’s hard to get a really good accounting of what’s happening in the middle of my back, you know?

It’s weird to think that lumps of tissue, growing where they shouldn’t, should be so scary. And yet…

It’s also interesting how open you can become (or not become) regarding your own body and its oddities while in a long term relationship. Depending on the circumstances, that openness might shift strongly in one direction, or the other, even between the same two people. Eventually, even in the best of cases, your body stops working properly and you cannot really hide that fact. The best person to help is the one you are with the most. Yet it’s also true that the person you are with most often can be the most impacted by those changes. Your “lump of tissue” is to a great extent theirs, too. Your bad news is their bad news.

I guess the alternative is for people to hide their injuries and then once sufficiently sick, to wander off somewhere alone to pass away. That’s a rather bleak thought.

Originally published April 15, 2022