Younger Son and I were taking a walk by the harbor when he remarked on a boat with a concrete hull.

“I always wondered how those things float,” he said.

Then we mentioned that section of a floating (concrete) bridge that had its first life in the Seattle area, and that continues to float outside of Craig’s harbor, acting as a breakwater.

My husband and I drove across that bridge’s replacement multiple times while hanging around Seattle for my cancer treatment.

You see, there’s a tiny nodule in my lung, barely big enough for a biopsy, affectionately known as a neuro-endocrine tumor, that must come out. The surgeon, whom I have no reason not to trust, will cut a series of openings between my ribs, insert a busy little robot on a leash, and perform a pulmonary lobular resection, or some such thing. In a way it’s like the breast lumpectomies (two of them) that I had in the fall: just take what’s needed to (hopefully) eliminate the cancer, and leave the rest. One major difference is that I will have a considerably longer recovery time and will be grounded from flying for at least two weeks.

Considering that I fly somewhere every five minutes or so, that’s a considerable hiatus.

And I’m disappointed, pure and simple. I got through the breast cancer treatment (everything’s done except for the long-term estrogen-blocker-horse-type-pills that I have to take for five years), I had plenty of bragging rights already, and I was pretty much clear to keep going to work.

The surgeon, whom I enjoy referring to as the Lung Dude, had told me we could “wait” until I was done with breast cancer treatment before worrying about my stupid lung. It turns out that what he meant by “waiting” was a matter of a few months, while I had been hoping it would be more like years.

Not so. The time to act is now, before it gets into my brain or some such malicious mischief.

Sink of float? A huge chunk of concrete floats, while a tiny little bump on my lung will sink to the very bottom and take me with it. So I’ll take whatever support I can find, from even the unlikeliest of sources, and me and the Lung Dude will take that crouching little monster right out of there.

I choose to float.