I am doing my best to go on with life as normal as I can. I know the busier I am the less I will have time to dwell on the possibility that I might have cancer. I am however coming much more to grips with the possibility - steeling myself for the worst. Preparing in my head how I will take the news if that in fact is what the news is and how my life will go from there.

Then something will happen that will shake my resolve, my logical analysis of things possibly to come and I lose it and have to work hard to get it back again. My Dad called last night. My Dad never calls, it’s always my Mom. But last night it was my Dad so I knew something was up. Like the time I had skipped school and came home at 3pm and found his truck in the driveway - this was not good.

Turns out he was calling because he thought I would have my lab results on Friday, I forgot to tell them I had changed my follow up appointment. The thing that shook me - my Mom couldn’t call because she was too afraid of the news. Afraid it was going to be bad. You know how it is too, the thought of one of your children being sick like that, having cancer, it would surely kill me. I can’t imagine how she feels.

The other thing that really got to me last night was Bizzy. “Bizzy” is the nickname we gave my 2-year-old daughter Elizabeth. Last night she had a hard time falling asleep so she came in with us and cuddled with me. She asked me to turn off the TV and we lay there dozing with arms wrapped tight around each other. It was at that moment that I realized just how Bizzy needs me and how much I need to be there for her.

Of all 4 of my children she is the one that is closest to me, the most dependent on me. She is the one that went on a hunger strike when I was in the hospital after having our fourth child. She is the one that would not let her father feed her or change her or hold her or cuddle her for the entire first year of her life.

And as I held her so tight to me last night I started to cry. Just silent, streaming tears repeating the same thing over and over in my head

Please God don’t take me from her.

Please let me see her grow up.