Numb -

Shock - that's the first emotion I felt a month ago when Dr. Dayton told me I had breast cancer. Stunned beyond words - me? Empty - no feelings at all, because this was a dream, I was just going the motions, I would wake up.

Reality is I am awake, but the shock is still here, particularly on days when I am tired and my mind will not take a break from the cycle of thought, "I have cancer, no I don't, how can I have cancer? Why? What? Me? I have cancer, no I don't . . ."

I leave before being left - If something feels wrong, doesn't fit, isn't going to work out, I'm the first to acknowledge this, and then I walk away, I don't look back, and I move on to creating something else. Shock - I can't walk away, this doesn't fit, but there's nothing I can do about it. I cannot move on, only move through.

Disbelief - maybe I don't, maybe the odds are not worth the risks of having chemo. What if I walked away - didn't play, didn't participate, but moved on to something else? 
But I don't know the language of cancer, I can't figure out the language of dealing with this, of stepping from stunned to believed.

On Sunday my father handed me an article from the Parade magazine. It talked about all the things to do to avoid cancer. Stunned - I do all these things, and I have cancer - don't I?

I look at the new scars on my chest, and I am blown away - where did they come from? Why do I need them? This port - this hardware - I only put goodness into my body, and now I have a foreign object that is going to deliver foreign killer matter. 

Empty beyond belief - beyond belief, beyond knowing, beyond faith - nothing I've read, no one I've talked to, no prayer I've prayed, can give me a good explanation of why I have cancer. Statistics - I am not a statistic - I want past that, I want preventive - legitimately preventive - because what I was doing to stay healthy did not prevent.

A month later, with chemo starting tomorrow, I am still shaking my head and asking that question.