Persistent

Today the doctor found a lump in my breast.

My right breast.

Persistent, she called it.

"I don't want to freak you out" she said.



I can't breathe.

Conservative- she said. Thorough. Careful. "You deserve to have someone else do the worrying for you." She handed me a tissue. She said it would be alright.

I came home and cried. I touched my forehead to my husbands. I tried to remember the leaves. The sky. His breath on my cheek. If everything else faded, I would remember this moment of bright colors when I was very alive.

I slept. I went to sleep because my brain simply couldn't deal with being awake. In my dreams, there was something very important that I had to do, someone I had to speak with, but I kept floating up. Unable to finish a conversation. Flying, but trying to fight my way back down to earth. To solid ground. Like trying to stay on the bottom of a pool.

Why not me? When my mom was diagnosed with cancer, I had the opposite reaction most people have. "Why not us?" I asked. "Bad things happen to good people every day. Why not us?"

28 year olds get diagnosed with cancer. Who am I to think it might not be me?

I can't breathe. I can't do anything but breathe.

I'm terrified.