I am cavalier about these things: being biopsied, having little things shaved off my hands, getting squamous cell cancers on the skin, having the precancerous ones zapped.
They pale in comparison to what other people went through, such as Lisa Bonchek Adams, who died March 7 of metastatic breast cancer, or Paul Kalanithi, the neurosurgeon who died Monday of metastatic lung cancer.
Both died too young. Both wrote eloquently about facing death.
But people like me who are lucky to look at cancer in the rear view mirror need to remember (as I remind myself), that these "little things" are part of a continuum. It is understandable to be upset.
If not for the cancer, these aftershocks – thankfully more like tremors – would not happen.
I realized this when somebody said something to me and I lowered my head and started to cry. It was not such a big deal. But this was only a day after the zapping and biopsying. I had (have) a tiny hole in the middle of my forehead. I still felt the stings. I thought it was just physical but I realized it was emotional also.
Big girls don't cry, I told Katie on the phone.
Sure they do, she said.
She tells her kids that grownups cry too.
It is not a bad thing.
On with the day.
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