Here goes

My PET scan is tomorrow afternoon. It will show any lymph involvement that the CT didn't catch. I’m scared out of my wits.

I keep clinging to the fact that my CT was clean. But that was two weeks ago—and they wouldn’t do both tests, if they didn’t need to. I’m not at all afraid of the procedure. If you hate needles, don’t get cancer. (I have a blood condition which meant I got stuck a lot, when I was little. That makes it easier to be tough about it, now.) I’m terrified of what they might find.

Even though I know that this is totally survivable. Isn’t that odd? Cancer does strange things to your mind. I think a part of it is knowing that my body will be different, irrevocably, after Thursday. I’m determined not to hide it—but I may not be able to, even if I’d choose.

I keep saying I want to remember this, to learn from it, to give myself to being changed by it. The truth is, I will never be able to forget. All I can do is choose how to live, with this as a part of me.

Living with cancer is not my choice. I am, and do, and will—even after this becomes part of my medical history. I want to be brave. I know I got off lightly. But there is nothing easy about it.

After the immediate fear subsides, after the cancer is cut off of (and out of) me, after I’ve recovered from the preventative treatment, I’ll have to carry health insurance, forever—and it will be more expensive and harder to get. If I don’t have jobs with benefits, I’m screwed. And there are way too many, like me.

My passion is ministry with the most marginalized. I know the church cares. I also know that I’m going to have to write grants forever. There is no money in this. I will “need” financial security—but like the people I’m serving, I will not have it.

You want to make an advocacy soup? That’s how. I’m articulate enough to speak up, and I will need to. If I can hear it as a calling, I can be almost okay with it.

I’ve been a poor hippie by choice, much of my adulthood. Now? I didn’t choose to land on the wrong side of our health care system. I got a diagnosis that branded me high-risk. I’m still young, strong, otherwise healthy. I am still myself. This was not my choice, any more than mental illness is someone else’s. It happened.

How am I coping right now? Rocking out to the same song over and over, on my iPod as I type this. Shivering—partly out of fear, and partly because it’s cold in my room right now. I told a friend I’d take a hot shower and call her, over an hour ago. I’ve been fielding e-mails, listening to music, writing, thinking, and letting myself feel, since.

Schoolwork? Not tonight. I feel like I’m full of caffeine. I’m on an airplane, cleared for takeoff, and the gears just engaged beneath me. There is no backing out of this.

It’s not a rush I’d wish for anyone.

I, and my friends, can ask all the right questions. I can know exactly what the doctors are doing, and why. I can also demand a port, rather than 20 separate IV starts. I can advocate for myself within this system. But the only real control I have over my own apparent biology, is who I am.

I ask my friends for prayer, because that’s the only way I can pray. I know God isn’t a Band-Aid. Miracle healings happen, but they’re rare. I don’t rely on God to break the laws of nature. Therefore, I don’t know what I’d even ask for. Courage? That’s my soul’s work, anyway. Strength? Develops with experience. Patience? Quietly, never.

I can ask for the grace to live this well, and by my actions I probably already have. I know what I mean. But the words still sound like surrender.

A teacher just reminded me in an e-mail, to breathe. My community is holding me in prayer and love. That is how I know God is here.