Dodging bullets and meeting angels

I cried in my doctor's office today.  I don't think she knew what to do with me.  Imagine if she had given me bad news instead.

6 months ago they found a nodule on my thyroid.  She wanted it rechecked in 6 months' time to see if it had changed, gotten bigger, become scary, etc.  Last time it took a long time for my doctor to get the actual ultrasound results.  This time I called ahead to make sure they had them and was told they did.  Then for my appointment today, well... they didn't.  Something happened they hadn't gotten scanned in so it took a few minutes to locate them.  That's when I started crying.  

As mothers, we worry about everyone else and brush our own stuff aside and pretend real hard it doesn't matter.  Until the moment it boils over like a pot on the stove.  Whoopsie daisy, everyone, don't mind the puddles I'm making over here I'll just clean that up and get on with dinner...

Now, I know, thyroid nodules are a dime a dozen and you can't swing a dead cat around without hitting someone who has one apparently.  But as my dad says, minor surgery is what they do on someone ELSE...  An insignificant lump is a lump they find on someone ELSE.  But, when she finally got the report, the news was that the nodule had shrunk in size.  Recheck it in a year.  Breathe...

After the appointment I decided to get lunch in the hospital cafeteria and take Indi for a picnic.  I was texting my good news when an elderly gentleman asked me if I had already ordered.  In the hopes of being polite, I put my phone away and told him yes, I was just waiting for my food.  He thought about this for a few seconds and smiled and said, "seems like a lot in life is just waiting."  He told me he had had to wait a lot in the army.  In World War II, it seemed he was always waiting.  I told him it was probably better than the alternative.  He agreed.  

He told me how he was on a tanker on the way to Japan to start fighting when they got the orders to turn around, that the war was over.  Someone was smiling down on you then, I said.  He said he found luck  another time when his wife had just given birth to their first child.  He had his deployment orders and wrote to ask for more time since his wife was still in the hospital.  He got a short deferment, and when it was time to leave, he got a letter saying he had been switched to inactive duty.  He didn't have to go anywhere.  He was able to stay with his family.

He had dodged a bullet twice.  I feel like I dodged one today.

He was someone I was supposed to meet today.  You know who these people are, you've had chance encounters with them, too.  And it's only afterward that you realize who they were, because they always hide their wings.