Cancer, Cancer Everywhere: An Invitation:
I am figuring that out, but it is a difficult course to chart when the reality of cancer never fades out to what it was before you had it. I might be healthy now, but other people I know either have it or have had it — and I am keenly aware of their fear. The commercials about it on television push my buttons in ways they never did before. I see how thick my medical file is every six months when I go for tests. I have been asked to join an organization that raises awareness about gynecologic cancers. Cancer has become the annoying friend that refuses to leave the fringes of my social circles.
I used to look at my life as having two periods: BC, before cancer, and AC, after cancer. Now, though, I see those two halves differently. There were 34 years when I did not know cancer, and now, and for the rest of my life, I do know cancer. We were introduced, we had an intimate relationship, and I am forever changed by my knowledge of it.
