Chapter 29: That One Time I Kept a Journal for One Month During Cancer

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First meeting with Mary (Dr. Mary Hardy) at 2:30. Why can’t my cancer just be about cancer? Why does it have to be harder – a lesson, self-discovery, a reason. Why the inner work – constantly. Who who is giving me these tests and what is it supposed to lead to? Greatness? More fucking trials? The greater good of manhood? What? Why can’t it be just cancer? That I will fight and beat and live to an old age to tell about and be cremated with my 40-year-old implants which will explode in a fiery burst of mess in the crematorium? Because I’m not just a person. I’m Marnie. Not Marnie, wife of Dirk, Mother of Ava, Daughter of Lynda and Zoltan. Just Marnie. Who is just Marnie. Who. I feel another lump in right breast. How could it be?

March 11, 2006

{One Journal Entry from this chapter is pictured above.}

I am an infrequent but sometimes maniacal journaler. However, I had completely forgotten that I kept a journal for exactly 32 days beginning on the day of my first (and last) Mammogram and Ultrasound, February 27, 2006. The rest of the journal itself (a yearlong daily diary-style Moleskin) is blank. Finding the following pages nine years later—seven years after I wrote the first draft of this book—opened another door into how my treatment effected or didn’t effect my daily life in real time, for one month. And just that one month. The following pages are my journal. I left the boring bits out (grocery lists, to-do lists, and client stuff), as surprised as I was that I even bothered to write anything down that didn’t have to do with cancer.