One tongue biopsy. Four people. Everybody carrying something different

Editor’s Note: This post documents events from 6/9/2025 — and was written 1 year later. I’m writing from the other side of treatment, but as any survivor knows, “the other side” doesn’t mean finished. It means still fighting, still watching, still trusting. — Scott

One year ago today I woke up on a perfectly ordinary East Tennessee morning. Mid-70s, a little overcast, slight dampness in the air—the kind of day where the weather can’t quite make up its mind. I pulled on a T-shirt and a pair of shorts, skipped breakfast, and loaded up with Barb, Pam, and Brandy to head over to Dr. Timothy McConnell’s office for a biopsy.

Just a regular Monday. Except it wasn’t.

Looking back now, I think about what was hovering over all of us that morning without any of us fully seeing it. The sky looked fine. The air felt comfortable. But somewhere above the tree line, the clouds were already filling up—rolling thunder, driving rain, a storm none of us were ready to name yet. Our lives were about to be flipped completely upside down, and on that particular Monday morning, we were still just singing in the car.

And I mean that literally.

Somewhere between the house and the office, Pam started in with it. You know the one—the Little Einsteins theme song, sung at full volume with full commitment, something about a rocket ship blasting off into the sky.

That right there tells you everything you need to know about how the Harris family handles stress. We don’t talk about the elephant in the room. We serenade it. Somebody’s always going to break the ice, somebody’s always going to light the mood—and nine times out of ten, it’s Pam. The conversation the whole way over was lighthearted, normal, just us cutting up together. Nobody brought up what we were actually driving toward. That wasn’t denial. That was love. That was all four of us protecting each other the only way we knew how.

Now I want to stop here for just a second. Because while I was up front cracking wise and riding that energy, something different was happening in the back seat.

Brandy knew.

She told me later—deep down, from the first moment I’d shown her that lesion, she’d had a gut feeling about what this was. She’d brought a book to the appointment, thinking maybe she could read her way through the wait and make the time move faster. She got through 23 pages. Twenty-three pages in the whole time we were there. The known-yet-unknown was eating her alive, she said. She felt like she had an elephant on her chest. She sat there letting every possible scenario run through her head, trying not to say anything, watching Barb and Pam make trips up to the front desk to sort out the billing and wanting to tell them to just sit down—but she didn’t. She just sat there and held it.

Twenty-three pages.

I didn’t know any of that at the time. I was up front in my own world. That’s the thing about the people who love you—they carry weight you never see them carrying.

Dr. McConnell’s office is not what you picture when somebody says “oral surgeon.” No flickering fluorescents. No hard vinyl chairs. Modern, clean, comfortable—fabric seats that were actually worth sitting in. I want to say there was a western on TV, though I couldn’t swear to it. Whatever it was, it wasn’t the news, and God bless them for that.

The waiting room was full, which didn’t surprise us at all. The man came highly recommended by my dentist over at Elite Smiles—she’d given him glowing reviews—and after our first appointment we understood exactly why. Dr. McConnell has a way about him. Calm. Genuinely kind. Professional without being cold. And the very first thing you notice when he walks in the room is the smile—perfectly white, absolutely gleaming. Which honestly makes all the sense in the world. The man looks in mouths for a living. His smile better be the best one in the building.

To pass the time, we started people-watching. Across the waiting room there was a frosted glass door, and every now and then you could see the silhouette of someone coming through it—some in wheelchairs, some being walked out, all of them a little wobbly and glassy-eyed from the anesthesia. We made a little game of it. Tried to figure out who they were, what their story might be. It sounds funny, and it was. But it was also four people doing the only thing they could do—keeping the mood light, staying together, not letting the quiet get too loud.

Pam handled the billing situation with the insurance—she works in insurance billing herself, so she was on it, making sure everything was filed correctly, making absolutely sure she was listed on my chart as a contact. Because, as she put it, we know Mom can’t remember stuff. Barb, for the record, has not issued a formal response to that characterization.

Then they called my name.

I stood up and something shifted inside me. Not dramatically. Not like a movie. Just a quiet, private moment where I understood that from this point forward, I was no longer a spectator. This wasn’t somebody else’s story I was hearing about. This was mine. I was the patient now. I took a breath, and I walked through the door.

The prep was routine. The nurses were cheerful and professional. And at some point one of them looked up and asked the question they always ask:

“How are you doing today?”

Now. I want you to understand what was happening in my brain at that exact moment. Because internally—internally—what I was thinking was something along the lines of: Hello, Sherlock. In case it escaped your notice, I am about to be sedated, and someone is going to cut a piece out of my tongue to find out if I have cancer. How am I doing. Bless your heart.

I held that one in. Mostly.

What I actually said was considerably more polite. Because despite what my family will tell you, I do have a filter. It just has a pretty generous mesh.

Dr. McConnell walked me through the procedure—tissue sample, clean and quick, nothing out of the ordinary for him. And there was something about the way he said it that settled me right down. I already trusted this man. That trust had been built from the very first appointment—his calm, his personality, the way he carried himself. When somebody you trust tells you it’s going to be okay, something in your chest actually believes it.

Then they mentioned the post-procedure diet. Soft foods. Liquids. Soups, smoothies, shakes—that kind of thing.

And without a single moment of hesitation, without any thought whatsoever, I heard myself say:

“Soups and smoothies and shakes—oh my.”

Like Dorothy skipping down the yellow brick road. With three daughters and six grandchildren, I have personally witnessed The Wizard of Oz approximately one thousand and one times. It was just right there, loaded and ready. The nurses laughed. Dr. McConnell smiled that gleaming smile. And I hadn’t even meant to be funny. It just came out—the way things do when you stop managing every reaction and just let yourself be human.

That’s who I am. Unfiltered, especially when I’m joking. I have what you might call a blurt problem. Sometimes it serves me well. Sometimes it requires a quick subject change. But in that moment, in that room, about to go under for a biopsy that was going to tell me whether or not I had cancer—it was exactly right.

Party time in the OR. Time for Scott to go nighty-night.

Small dose, quick procedure. Once the anesthesia hit it was like somebody threw the knockout punch—1, 2, 3, bam. Out cold. A few minutes later I was blinking back awake with Barb beside me and absolutely no idea where I’d gone or how long I’d been there.

Here’s the part I want you to picture. You remember that frosted glass door? The one we’d all been watching and laughing about for the past hour?

That was now me coming through it.

I can tell you with complete confidence that the people sitting in that waiting room watching my silhouette emerge were thinking one thing and one thing only: There goes a fine specimen of a man. Muscular. Chiseled. Built like Thor. Flowing hair. Clearly blessed by the gods.

What they actually saw was what my granddaughter has always lovingly called me—3P. Pleasantly Plump Papa. There is not a single muscular element to my physique in any way, shape, or form, and I think it’s important to be transparent about that.

Dr. McConnell walked out to the car with me—Pam notes that he covered post-care instructions at that point, which was smart because I was still approximately 40% in La La Land and retaining very little. They got me settled. Barb had the situation handled. And that was it.

As Brandy put it later: Nothing else mattered other than the first step was done. Now we wait for the results.

The first step.

I think about that phrase a lot. Because when I blurted out that Wizard of Oz line in the procedure room—I wasn’t being brave. I wasn’t performing courage. Something in me just moved forward, the way it does, the way it always has. Put one foot in front of the other. You’re not going to solve a problem by standing still and staring at it. You take a step. You get the ball rolling.

One year ago today, on a slightly overcast Monday morning in East Tennessee, surrounded by the people I love most in this world—one of them singing Little Einsteins, one of them quietly holding 23 unread pages, all of them carrying more than I knew—that was my first step.

I had no idea what was coming. None of us did.

But we took the step together.

Nobody Fights Alone

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” — Philippians 4:13