Walking two paths at the same time is hard

People ask me how I feel about my diagnosis of cancer.  I usually reply grumpy and bad-tempered at having cancer.

My scan is due Monday, and until then I’m finding one thing very hard. Let me try to explain it. (Don’t panic and think I’ve gone off subject, I haven’t.)

There’s a truly weird experiment called the Double-Slit experiment.

Basically you shine a laser light through a pair of narrow slits, side by side and onto a sheet ( or camera plate or whatever). What you get is a pattern of light and dark bars on the sheet, because the lightwaves coming through the two slits interfere with each other. Sometimes they reinforce each other (the light bars) sometimes they cancel each other out (dark bars).

So far, so good. Now turn down the light until only one photon of light is emitted at a time. You’d expect it would go through one slit or the other, and then have a clear run at the sheet, because there is nothing coming through the other slit.  Only it doesn’t happen. What happens is that the photon, the smallest possible chunk of light, goes  through both slits at the same time and interferes with itself.

That is mind-boggling. The photon of light goes down two different paths through two different slits, at the same time. I cannot understand that, but it is real. That’s the way the universe was made.

And right now I feel I’m walking two paths at the same time.

Maybe it is treatable. I’ll have a hard time for a while, then come out of it with health restored and my life to live again.

Or maybe it’s not, and I’ve got so many months to sort everything out and leave my family secure.

And I don’t know!  I’ve got two possibilities in my head, two roads to walk, and I can’t wait till Monday.