Bringing Julia Child’s book My Life in France with me into surgery yesterday was probably not the brightest thing I’ve ever done. Her descriptions of France are wonderful; her detailed recollection of meals eaten in the 1940s is astonishing. However, instructed as I was to eat and drink nothing before my operation, I grew lightheaded when I came to the passage about sole à la normande. She calls it “a poem of poached and flavored sole fillets surrounded by oysters and mussels.” Yum!

I was having my second surgery for breast cancer in eight days. The first one removed the tumor. This second operation was to create a larger margin around the tumor site to prevent the recurrence of cancer. As the scheduled time for my operation stretched from 1:30 p.m. to 3:00 and finally 5:20, I had visions of crêpes flambées and tasty fromages flitting through my head.

Mind you, lying around on a gurney awaiting surgery for four hours is not all peaches and cream. I howled when the nurse inserting the IV couldn’t find a vein. (It took three tries, and wow did it burn.) She took my face in her hands when I burst into tears. “It’s okay to cry,” she said while she held me.

“Why so many of us?” I sobbed. “Why does it happen?”

“The good news,” she said, “is they’re getting closer to a cure.”

We discussed that for a while. Both of us were angry, knowing that too many research programs exist to perpetuate employment for scientists. There is too much scrambling for grants and duplication of effort when there should be more focus on a cure. One in eight women worldwide will have breast cancer. Every thirteen minutes a woman will die because of it.

The nurse and I both noted something else. Of the thirteen women I’ve spoken to about their own experiences, eleven have been stricken in the left breast. The nurse, one who travels “on assignment” throughout the country, has noticed the same. “Why,” she said, “is it always on the left?”

Nobody can say. And wouldn’t you know it, I’ve come to that portion of Julia’s book where she describes roasting a full-breasted duck with minced shallots and wine. How’s that for an ending to today’s blog?