THE NARRATIVE ARC
Life Beyond a Really Horrible Diagnosis
And emerging with a Mona Lisa smile
Have you ever looked at a photo taken of yourself right before a catastrophic event, an event so horrible it changed your life? And in the photo, you seem happy and calm — completely oblivious to the disaster about to fall?
That’s the photo above.
I’m a much-older woman than I was three years ago. Now a road map encircles my eyes — lines of sadness. But then? It was before cancer. Before the diagnosis, which pinged into my email past 9 p.m. from a doctor conducting business-as-usual.
A month after I was playing with my phone taking selfies, I was diagnosed with uterine cancer. I had to go through a surgery in which tissue was collected to be tested. The day after the surgery, an ice storm struck. The power was out for nine days. I sat at my home in rural Oregon, looking out the window as trees I grew up with fell. Trees I climbed as a child.
A tremendous cracking noise would occur. Then, branches from my willow crashed to the ground, across the pond. I sat on the couch, staring out of the window and watching my world fall around me. I cried silently, wrapped up in layers of wool and cotton as my lower abdomen cramped.
