Prolouge

There are a handful of times in my lfe I thought I might die. At age 15, I slumped down on my bedroom floor against the antique dresser that now lives in my daughters bedroom. I felt a lone even though I had a lot of friends. I even had a boyfriend named Chris. He was Greek. My girlfriends and I had checked out a bunch of books on palm reading and toret cards from the library. In our novice chatter, we read each other's future. My line life was short. About half way, it just stopped. Nobody else's stopped. 35, I decided I would die of some horrible disease at 35. So sitting there in my bedroom, depressed, lonely, I traced the line that stopped with my thumb and thought of how I might kill myself. Not pills, I wouldn't do that right and someone would save me. Then the aftermath of dealing with having had tried to kill oneself would be more torture then the moment I stopped breathing. Gassing? No disgusting. Hanging I not stomach. Diving off a bridge? Maybe. But, would it be the most horrible pain? So, no, not today. I wasn't ready. I wrote a poem, instead, about a bottom drawer whisky jar. Not that I even knew what whisky tasted like. But, I knew on the cop movies that the detective pulled out a jar of whisky every time he saw a brutal murder. That must be what adults do when it is too hard.


I thought I would die a second time my senior year of high school when I had my first asthma attack. I was a lone in the chemistry lab doing a titration lab. I was horribly frustrated and my lab partner had not showed up. All the natural gas from the Brunson burners had been escaping into the room all day and begun to fill me lungs. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't see. Mr. Pimentel with his giant grey Einstein-style fro finally walked back into the room and took me out in the cool afternoon air, had me sit with my head between my legs, and breathe. I got a C on the lab and weekly visits to an allergist.

My asthma got me again during my first birth. Julia came five weeks early. Though my water broke, she was so stubborn and wouldn't come out. We had to induce the labor to prevent her getting an infection. I remember holding Scott's hand and trying to listen to Nurse Lisa. Breath, breath, push, gently, push, stop. At some point, my ears stopped hearing. I could see everyone, and I began to not be able to breathe. In panic, I look up at Scott and he said, or someone said, “Push anytime, let's get her out." Okay, I didn't really think I was going to die. I thought my baby might be dead or have something very wrong with her. I had never been so scared.

The fourth time I thought about dying was the moment I sat in the freezing April air on the front steps of the CSU new art gallery in Ft. Collins. I closed my cell phone. Someone on the other side of the steps who was smoking with a friend came over and asked if I was okay. I can't remember if I said anything audible, but probably yes. I was just told I had three cancerous tumors in my left breast. My girlfriends came out to find me, Picked me up, we hugged and then went inside to clean up my red stained face. I brushed it off for the night and continued to socialize. "I can do this," I thought,”This is going to be hard, but I can do this." It wasn't until after the biopsy that I started to think that maybe I couldn't do it. Each week, I had a test. First the biopsy showing that I was ER and PR negative. I remember Dr. Mark's eyes when he walked into the exam room to tell me that my cancer is possibly untreatable. Then there was the PET scan and liver biopsy pushing my odds of survival further down the toilet with a stage IV label. This was days before my 34th birthday. The plan was set, I would have surgery after my birthday and them enter the cancer-land with chemo in June. At this point, though strong as a bull, I thought I might die. Of course, all that changed when we learned from the surgical pathology that I was HER2/neu+ and then showed great response after my third round of therapy. I could do this. I am doing this. I will prevail.

So here I am with a recurrence in my brain just 9 months after my label of NED, no evidence of disease. I am 35 years old.