Behind the rainbow? It's very still.

I unlocked and opened Laura's door, and she climbed into the van without a word. Our parking lot conversation about the cost of head scarves had reached its natural conclusion. As I circled around the front in this private moment, I was ready for her emotional release. She'd been able to roll with it so far, but I didn't expect her to internalize everything we had just taken in, while still healing from the surgery.

I glanced up at her as I unlocked my side. She was lost in thought.

"I think I'm just going to go ahead and get my hair cut off before the first chemo treatment. Janet did that to avoid having it come out in hunks in the shower."

Ah, the unbelievable Janet. Janet, who had dealt not only with breast cancer, but bone cancer before that.

I shrugged. "Makes all kinds of sense to me. Sure more proactive and puts you in control. Yeah! I like it!"

"We can call it a 'Lose the Locks' party and invite friends. We'll drop the husbands at Gators and the wives can troupe over next door to the spa for the big event. Then we'll all toast to facing it head on."

I put the key in the ignition and fired it up. That's my Laura.

Don't like my worn out shoes, but at least I have some.

Perspective. It's a kind of magic, really.

I was sitting in my adirondack chair in the back yard trying to understand how it had gone so wrong. The week, now behind me, ended far from how I'd hoped.

Having worked hard for days to get the right results, I found out suddenly and unpleasantly I had gone in the wrong direction. My expectations for a happy conclusion turned into a crushing disappointment. It had been a long time since I had been so deflated in my work.

This is where perspective comes into play.

Laura and I had just gone through the same thing, but with much more significant consequences. Going into her surgery, our expectation was that negative results on the sentinel lymph nodes would mean that the ordeal was all but over.

When the doctor appeared in the waiting room after the surgery to let my sister and me know the nodes were negative, I felt like dancing, and I know Laura felt the same way when she found out.

Then we got the initial results from the pathology.

Finding invasive cancer, I'm sure, is never good news, even in small quantities. But imagine when you think you're at the finish line only to find the race may have just begun.

I looked out across the yard, and my work week settled into its proper place.

Shirts with fins and friends with tales

Once again, we've come a long way in a short time.

The surgery done, the healing has been exemplary. Now we wait, hopeful today's the day the doctor will remove the plastic tube drain coming out of Laura's side.

At the nurse's instruction Laura has replaced her stylish shirt with the stiff white paper vest we've come to associate with the office exams. It has large seams that stand straight up about two inches like fins along her shoulders, but we've long since exhausted our comments about the outfit. This is about the fourth time she's put one on.

She adjusts the open front, and frowns. "I talked with Janet, who said her chemo was usually once a week. Each week it's effects lasted longer and by the time the last one rolled around, her doctor decided they'd just better not do it."

One of her friends at the school has had to go through it, and Laura's not relishing the impact to her teaching schedule.

My thoughts turn to the time when chemo will take its rightful place alongside the likes of blood letting as a regretable sidetrack in medical annals.

As the doctor examines the surgical site, Laura recounts how she nearly fainted when she had a similar drain pulled out before. "It hasn't really been all that uncomfortable, you know, it's just more of a worry than anything -- having to be careful with it."

The doctor has her lay back on the table, and a few seconds later, the drain's out, much to Laura's relief.

A flood of dialogue ensues. Cellular marker results, dependencies, more uncertainties that will have to wait for pathologists' reports.

Next step: the oncologist appointment in about a week.

Vote with your feet, people.

Tightening my legs on the gas tank, I grip the throttle and accelerate smoothly onto I-4 from the Lake Mary on-ramp. I can't believe I'm going to get an actual paper paycheck today.

Of course I wouldn't be resorting to such lows without a good reason. Considering our already large bank just got gobbled up by a yet larger bank and promptly informed us that they were going to withdraw our money up to five days before scheduled bill payments was enough to rub my fur the wrong way.

We're voting with our feet.

Is it just me, or does it seem to anyone else that the larger a corporation gets, the worse their management decisions are for their customers?

Actually, I think it's a corollary effect to one of the Great Evils of our day -- concentration of power. The potential for manifestation of patent psychopathic disregard for the general good increases in direct proportion to the availability of power in any one person's hands. 9/11 would have been quite different a few decades ago when passenger jets (that could be piloted by one person) didn't exist.

I digress. Changing banks means a new bank account direct deposit, and a fresh trial period for the direct deposit.

Sizing up traffic pace and concentration of harried drivers on each others' bumpers, I decide there are already going to be plenty of cars in the twisted smoking heap when someone in the pack texts their girlfriend about how slow traffic is on I-4 today and doesn't see the car slow down in front of him.

I ease in behind one of the more reasonable cars in the slower lane. It's only a couple of miles anyway.

Two huge footprints, two very small tumors.

Ten years ago. Unbelievable.

Vivid memories crowd back in as we talk with friends at church about where we were when the news broke. Watching the children's moment, Laura points out that virtually none of the children were alive when the towers came down. "To them, it will be history, not a horrific day they lived through. How quickly our collective psyche moves on!"

Of course 9/11 was on everyone's mind.

But even thinking about and reliving this most defining event of recent history, it's been difficult to forget the other news so significant to us personally -- pathology from Laura's surgery uncovered two small foci of a more invasive type of cancer.

The good news that her sentinel nodes were clear was a great but short-lived relief. Now we wait for new data from the pathologists who are evaluating tumor markers, and we will take this information to an oncologist's conversation in about two weeks. In that discussion we expect to discern whether chemo would be a desireable strategy.

In the meantime, we are blessed with extraordinary healing, and Laura is thinking about cutting her planned absence from the classroom short by a week if the progress continues.

Decisions, decisions ...

Pain is relative.

"Doesn't hurt as bad as the wasp sting."

Laura is repositioning the wires laying across her bed and adjusting to her new environment out of the recovery center. Systems are obviously back online.

I smile. My teasing just before the surgery isn't forgotten. She had mentioned the wasp sting resulting from yard work yesterday as we were doing pre-op with the surgeon. I turned to my sister sitting next to me to have some fun. "Oh, she was quite whiny about the wasp sting. 'Oh, it hurts. Look! It's swelling!'"

We had to look really close to see the swelling.

Laura was speechless. I hadn't belittled her sting at all yesterday when it happened, and now here I was impuning her character in front of my sister and the surgeon.

It was great.

So the surgery was uneventful, and sentinel nodes were clear! Praise God! We're doing the happy dance here -- the virtual happy dance, anyway.

Thanks so much for all your shows of support and prayer, and stay tuned!

We've reached the rally point.

The phone rings, and I wonder whether it's one of the boys. Don't have to wait long to find out.

"Hi Andy! How are things at Ft. Campbell?"

The boys are checking in, one by one, seeing how their mom is faring as we get ready for the procedure.

There isn't a lot of concern expressed, and conversation stays light. How are things at the base? When's your graduation from Air Assault? How are plans shaping up for Thanksgiving and Christmas visits to Florida?

Everyone is pretty confident things are going to be fine. Statistically there isn't much to be concerned about. Amazingly, the surgery will be outpatient.

Besides what chair will provide the legs-up support for Laura prescribed by the post-operative literature and packing a novel for me for during the procedure, our main concerns are when to go to miss the rush hour traffic and what I'll have to eat while I'm waiting during the surgery at lunchtime.

Laura tells me that in her pre-operative discussions with the nurse she was told that she'll be on a self-medication regimen for pain, and that she should "stay ahead of it" rather than wait to feel the pain before dosing.

I lift an eyebrow. I have a mental image of her dosing herself into a coma.

"Well, she talked about if I have to get up for any reason or move around, I should dose first," she explained.

So, the yard is mowed, the laundry's done, groceries are stocked, there's gas in the tank, and our friends and church family are praying.

We should be good to go.