I've never been a patient person, and waiting for anything can be excruciating. Yet waiting for something painful, for a medical procedure that has the potential to reveal that I'm another number added to a horrendous statistic (close to 20,000 women in California are diagnosed with breast cancer every year, and 1 in 9 Caucasian women will develop breast cancer during their lifetimes) seems almost impossible to bear at times, yet my fear increases as the day of reckoning approaches. I've "dodged this bullet" before, ten years ago, and now I struggle not to apply yet another cliché superstition to my own life----that my "luck may have run out."
Of course, it has nothing to do with luck. I'm older and have been exposed to dioxin (along with every other person on Earth) and a long list of other poisons for longer. After all, I lived in "Cancer Alley" down in Louisiana for most of my life. What should I expect.
So I've been watching documentaries (THE CORPORATION, which I highly recommend, and THE DEVIL AND DANIEL JOHNSTON, on an interesting musician) and science fiction (KNOWING, predictable, but it kept my attention)----trying to keep my mind off of worry, of fear.
Distractions are what we turn to when we can no longer control our feelings.
