Isn’t life just like that? When the news was bad, I thought I was finished, that there wasn’t going to be any good news for me again. But I was wrong. And when things are going along great, I feel on a roll, that nothing bad can happen to me. But those things swing, pendulum like, through my life. However, I had never been hit with a life-threatening condition. I lived a healthy life, exercised, ate well, looked great. I felt immune.

A friend of mine would call this “magical thinking.” But really, illusions have their value. They protect me from so much reality that I can’t live fully in the present. Possibly that positive thinking acts as a kind of protection, like vitamins. But now I can’t pretend I can protect myself. I feel a little like the way I felt when I brought my son home after a perfectly normal birth: vulnerable in a new, irreparable way. I’d never be safe the same way again.