Welcome to October. My favorite month of the year. It's now five days since I've been diagnosed with breast cancer. I'm yet another woman in Marin County, California with the disease. It's epidemic, and I feel like a statistic. I'm trying to summon the courage I've given Sophia, the character in my novel, The Still Voice. Sophia experiences many hardships growing up in Germany during WWII--some of them at the hands of the Gestapo. She joins the Edelweiss Pirates to fight the Nazis, to avenge what happens to her as a young girl.
I don’t feel courageous this morning, October 13, 2009. When my husband’s alarm woke us both at four thirty I was babbling, “There’s a yellow bus. I could step in front of the bus, and it would be over.” He saw it as foolish talk, for which I’m glad. I don’t want to step in front of the school bus that circles through our valley every afternoon at three o’clock dropping off schoolchildren. Though it certainly would simplify things. There’d be no more looking for an agent or publisher. There’d be no facing a battle with cancer.
I thought it would help my morale to talk about it with friends and family. It has. Now I’m talked out. I don’t want surgery and radiation. I don’t want to know if it’s spread to my liver, lungs, lymph nodes or bones. I don’t want to worry if I should have chemotherapy, too. I just want my life back. I want to revel in writing every day, finding the perfect words for my story. Why me? Why this? Why now?
I’m starting to cry again, and have to stop writing. I’m sure I’m the world’s biggest baby. Millions of women have faced breast cancer with the courage of my Sophia. I’ve never written a blog before. I wonder why I’m doing it, except for the fact that I’m a writer. It’s what I do.
Juliane C.
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