The ghost of Christmas past

He then made bold to inquire what business brought him there.

"Your welfare!" said the Ghost.

He could not help thinking that a night of unbroken rest would have been much more conducive to that end.

It was a year ago, just before Christmas. This time, last year, I was partying in Key West, fresh off an astonishingly successful and exciting TAD trip on board THETIS, leading a dozen merchant vessels in an depressingly fruitless man overboard search, weaving at high speed through a fleet of fishing vessels to chase down go-fasts, carefully choreographing intelligence and helicopter flights and small boats and international agreement and ship navigation to catch drug runners, threading back and forth through rough seas in pitch blackness to pick out and retrieve jettisoned, camouflaged drug bales, deftly bobbing the ship just in sync with the surging sea to squeak just inside the pitch/roll limits for helo ops, frolicking during sun-baked port call days in Grand Cayman, and above all, reveling in the respect and confidence, invaluable shiphandling opportunities, and the deep, newfound confirmation that I really was, and would be, and wanted to be, a cutterman.

So here I was in Key West, squeezing out a few more days of paradise while my permanently assigned ship, the CYPRESS, was underway working buoys. The sun-drenched time passed quickly, filled with delicious food, apple pie-baking, Christmas church services, jogs around the island, a small-boat trip out to a lazy inlet, and daily JO get-togethers. Even a day trip I arranged to JIATF-South was more adventure and reconnecting with an old friend than work.

It seemed anything was possible. I'd met my goal, earning a 270' OOD qualification in just 10 days of watch. What took me 13 months and two boards to achieve on CYPRESS, I'd somehow knocked out in just a week and a half, the best birthday present of all, as the timing had it. The ship's CO had passed along a glowing recommendation. And at last, I had a whole group of JOs to hang with, and we were having a blast. I'd fallen in love with white hull life. But I was living on borrowed time.

One afternoon, as I was putting on a necklace, preparing to go out with my newfound friends, I felt a funny lump tucked under my collarbone. Tiny. Barely noticeable. Didn't belong there. I put it out of my mind until late that night, curled up on the couch, trying to focus on a few paragraphs from Jeremiah, everyone else asleep, the house heavy with humid, warm December air. I kept fingering that little lump in the hollow of my neck, my heart sinking. I knew. Somehow I knew.

I didn't tell anyone, not then and not for a couple of weeks, not until the holidays were over and I was back at work, at last. We were getting ready to go into drydock. I was nervous with expectation over my impending orders, wondering anxiously if all the ammunition I'd gathered during the 270' patrol would be enough to influence the detailer into taking a tremendous chance and granting me a white hull OPS billet somewhere. Frustrated, because for three glorious weeks I had tasted freedom, challenge, and respect, underway; and now here I was, nobody again, loving my job but bristling against a structure that kept me a big fish in a small pond, heavy on responsibilities but completely stripped of any authority to accomplish anything, feeling unrespected and harassed for all I did. Disappointed we'd be going into local drydock instead of undertaking a much more interesting voyage around the Keys and up the East Coast to the Coast Guard Yard in Baltimore.

It was time. I went to see the ship's HS1. "Doc, I've got this weird lump in my neck. It's probably nothing, but I'd like to get it looked at." He asked me a ton of questions, carefully massaged my neck, and flipped through several diagnostic books. He wrote everything down and sent me away, and later that afternoon he brought me back. "I'm going to send you over to the clinic for some bloodwork," he said. "It looks like you have a swollen lymph node. There are a lot of things that can cause that." I don't remember the laundry list of possible, probable causes he rattled off, but at the end, as almost an afterthought, he pulled out one of those thick diagnostic books and slowly turned the pages until he found what he wanted. "Now, this is highly unlikely, but you should know that there's also a very remote possibility that you have either Hodgkins or non-Hodgkins lymphoma. But I wouldn't be worried about it right now."

I wasn't worried. But I knew.