“I just realized what day this is,” my partner, Michael, called out the other day, when I was doing something in the den and he was sitting in a chair in the living room with his laptop on his lap. I couldn’t exactly hear what he was saying, so I went into the living room, stood beside him, and asked him what he was talking about.

“It’s an important anniversary,” he said.

And then he told me that it was exactly one year ago minus one day that he had that scan. I knew right away what scan he was referring to: It was that routine scan of his shoulder and upper chest, in a sports medicine office, which he got because he told his GP he was having some shoulder pain and the doctor said, “Well, why don’t you get your shoulder looked at that sports medicine place since your insurance will cover it?” And Michael did that, and the radiologist who looked at the results of the scan said he thought he saw something suspicious on........

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