Happiness is....

Getting a negative mammogram result

It’s that time of year when you can almost convince yourself it’s still summer. Temperatures are in the seventies and the trees still have their leaves, though where I live they are etched with gold now, not longer completely green. And, it’s with the feeling that I might be missing something that I went to my annual mammogram appointment yesterday. I was anxious, I won’t lie. I practically kissed the attendant when she handed me the letter with the results. Yes, for the fifth year in a row I do not have breast cancer.

Today, I was thinking about that anxiety, which at times hangs over the heads of all breast cancer survivors. Will I get it again? When will I get it again? I don’t want to ask these questions, but sometimes my monkey mind gets ahead of my conscious brain.

Truth is, I’ve had a great run. Five years NED (no evidence of disease) and I’ve been blessed to be offered the opportunity to help the folks at the American Cancer Society with our shared mission of assisting people stricken with the “Emperor of Maladies,” as author and doctor Siddhartha Mukherjee called it in his book of the same name. It’s not until now that I’ve actually had the courage to wade into the 470-page opus, but I highly recommend it. I have learned so much about the wrong turns and ego-induced misdirections that have occurred over the centuries of cancer research. Mukherjee shows it — warts and all — the search for cancer’s causes and treatments.

And, I now know something I didn’t — some questions have no answers. There is no answer to the question of whether I will get cancer again. Yesterday’s report only means that I don’t have it now. And, for now, that’s enough.