Cancer – when I first heard the word, this was my fear:
It wasn’t that I might die – although that was certainly swirling around in my brain. Some more logical part of my mind understood, though, that even if my case were bad, death wouldn’t be imminent. There’d be surgeries to try, medications, chemo, radiation….lots of measures before, well…before the big fear ever became a reality. At a minimum, I had a few years.
No, what immediately went through my mind was the slippery slope. I feared entering “cancer world,” seeing my life 
transformed from something I thought I directed, to something cancer dominated. Before, I worried about my goals and how to get there — my writing, my activism. In the limbo after hearing that word in the same sentence as my name, I feared a life where every day began and ended with what to do about the cancer, what stage I was at, and the best way to treat/fight it. I feared that everything I once valued or thought important would be hiding in the shadows of this fight for my life. I wanted to keep everything as it was and put the illness in the shadows. Just deal with it like I might a cold or the flu, and then “get back to normal.” Continue reading
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hat one single fact. I could tell it was happening by the all-too-earnest, searching expressions –“Oh my God. How will you survive this?” — I saw when I told people what was going on with me. Vanished in an instant was all that had come before, all the other qualities that made me me — the fearless writer, passionate activist and champion of all causes, the confidante, lover and friend.