On the radiologist's instruction, the technician returns for additional breast images. I gather my belongings and down the hall we go to the ultrasound room. With more detailed images in hand, the technician requests I to wait until she returns.
When the exam room door opens again, the radiologist is the first one to enter the room. This is not news you send by messenger.
The radiologist is blunt but not unkind in her honesty. This is cancer and the cancer does not look good. However, there is no reason to give up hope. There are effective treatments available. She cautiously adds to her assurance of hope, until the biopsy is done no one can know exactly what the cancer cells are doing and the path they will most likely take in the days ahead. I will not know how much of a battle I will need to engage in with this cancer, to win the rest of my life from a disease designed to take life from me, until the biopsy provides a working definition of the adversarial activity going on within my body.
Regardless of outcome, my life will never be the same. I am in a war I did not volunteer for and will need to learn what it truly means to be a warrior. Getting from the battlefields of here to there will be a series of losses and wins. I hold a guarded confidence I will make it to there.
If you are going into battle, the first rule of being a warrior, a warrior will tell you, in order to live is this: you cannot fear death. I am fighting back the fear of death.
On May 7th, 2002, I drive home in contemplation and concern for my children. How I can avoid the unavoidable shattering of innocence in their world? How to protect them from their own fear and pain? May 7th is a week before Mother's Day, less than two weeks before my 48th birthday. Will I have the courage and resolve to conquer my own fear and pain? Will I be able to carry my children and myself through the battlefields with dignity and strength, and not lose heart along the way?
