11.17.2012

Preface

A young and frightened woman stands in the parking lot of a nondescript medical building, hugging her fiancée. The life she hasn’t yet lived suddenly looms in jeopardy... the wedding she is just beginning to plan, marriage, a career, travel, pregnancy, motherhood… the future that is so big in her 19-year-old eyes.

She has a small lump in her left breast and is about to go inside for an ultrasound. Her paternal grandmother had breast cancer late in life, which is enough to make the possibility frighteningly plausible. She has a tearful prayer in the arms of the young man she can’t wait to marry and then makes her way inside alone to discover what will become of her.  

The ultrasound technician squeezes the cold gel onto her chest and slides the wand over the small lump. After a few minutes, the technician leaves the room to get the radiologist for a second opinion, which of course further incites the fears of the young woman. But the doctor who comes in, rather quickly determines the lump to be nothing but a cyst that will heal in time. The oh-so-young woman, awash in relief, leaves to return comfortably into her life that is unfolding with normalcy and good-fortune.

She is innocent and happy; she is perfectly healthy - or so she will think for another nine years.

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