When I received the results from my needle biopsy, the doctor told me to go home and open a bottle of champagne; we'd found it before it had gone outside of the duct and become invasive. He told me I was lucky. There wouldn't be chemo or radiation, only surgery.
I know I am lucky.
My doctor was very proud of himself for being so OCD,(his words), about my ultrasound. I'm grateful. I'd never considered that this man helps women save thier lives for his living. He has seven children, (showed me his youngest on his iPhone), likes opera, (he prefers opera in his hometown, ChiCaGo!), and was listening to Beck in his office as we looked over my charts.
I waited until I got to the car to dissolve and send the text that it was the best of bad news: preventative surgery, but surgery nonetheless.
It's been two weeks since the surgery and today I received good news. I am a lucky woman. On the way down I rode the elevator with a woman who had the slightest scruff of hair visible under her scarf and ball cap. She chatted like a happy bird for two floors and then walked with me to my car. I could barely say anything to her other than I heard sugar isn't good for cancer. A myth, she said, and also, that chemo killed her love of chocolate, and food. She has two chemo treatments left and then she begins radiation. I wished her well, got in my car and waved as she drove away.
I wish all 192,370 women who will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year, well.
I've been thinking about grace. I can't really articulate what I feel or exactly what I experienced, but I know that brief encounter was most certainly grace. And also, that this exuberant woman is a mirror. I don't think meeting her was coincidence, at least not for me. I believe I was being shown just how lucky I am.
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