Things that used to scare me

When I was a kid, I was afraid of two things: the seeds & pulp in a halved cantaloupe, and going over bridges. I have no earthly idea why the cantaloupe scared me, but it did. I remember watching my mom cut the fruit in half and dig out the seeds & pulp with a big spoon then flip the gunk into the sink to go down the disposal. Creepy.

The bridge thing started early. We used to go to a local park a lot as a family when I was a kid, and there was an old, wooden bridge with wide planks (maybe even railroad ties?) and a shallow stream running underneath. The wood was worn, and there were spaces between the planks, between which the stream could be seen. I held my breath all the way across, every time.

I’m not afraid of the cantaloupe seeds & pulp anymore, but bridges…a little bit. The Ship Channel Bridge in Houston gives me the vapors, and driving from Houston to New Orleans includes a series of loooong bridges over mysterious-looking bodies of water. I’m not crazy about the concrete jungle flyover freeways around here, and the Beltway going toward I-10 West has a pretty high on-ramp that gets my heart beating a little faster. I don’t have to hold my breath anymore, but I’m still just a teesny bit uneasy about bridges.

I was reminded of the cantaloupe thing the other day as I cut into one and cubed it up to serve with dinner. I chuckled to myself at my childhood self and fears, and in my head, felt some pride at only having had two little fears. Monsters under the bed never bothered me, nor did the amorphous Bogeyman. I didn’t need a nightlight, and don’t mind things that go bump in the night.

When my kids were tiny, I was a little bit afraid of becoming the victim of a violent crime. The idea of leaving those precious babies motherless unnerved me. Then my own mom died, while my kids were still pretty tiny, and I quit worrying about violent crime and began to fear cancer.

Little did I know that not even 5 years after losing my mom to stupid, wretched cancer, my newest, biggest fear would materialize.

Being diagnosed ahead of the curve, i.e., at a young-ish age, is a surreal experience. I remember well the feeling in the pit of my stomach when I got the phone call on April 26th to say that the biopsy indicated a malignancy. I’ll never forget Nurse Sharon telling me that Dr Dempsey needed to book some time on my calendar, which turns out to be a nice way of telling me to come and see them the very next day so they can hand me a diagnosis that will change my life.

When that fateful call came, Macy and I were shopping for a birthday gift for my cousin, and I had to pretend that everything was ok because I didn’t want to alarm my little girl. Trevor was out of town but en route home, and after I got the call we kept missing each other as he boarded a plane or I was in the car with the kids and not able to speak freely. We resorted to exchanging texts to convey the most horrible of news.

The kids and I went on to my cousin’s birthday party, me with a big secret but determined to put on a happy face and not ruin the celebration. It seemed torturous at the time to be unable to talk to anybody about what I’d just learned. In hindsight, however, it was probably a good thing because it gave me time to process the steaming pile of bad news I’d been served.

It took a couple of days before I really wrapped my head around the fact that I had breast cancer. The more people I told, though, and the more times I actually said the words, “I’ve been diagnosed with breast cancer,” the more real it became. Before long, the awful reality had set in, and I transitioned from shock to action.

Dr Dempsey has a rule of not accepting a patient’s decision on which surgery option–lumpectomy, single mastectomy or bilateral mastectomy–until at least 3 days after she delivers the diagnosis. I made up my mind pretty fast, but waited until 3 days had passed before I called to tell her. I’ve never regretted the choice I made.

The bottom fell out of my world, and many things changed with my diagnosis. My fear of cancer was one of those things that changed.

I don’t know how it happened or why, but I stopped fearing cancer. Maybe because it became such a huge part of my life, it lost some of its scariness. Maybe by being forced to confront it, and the myriad ways it had infiltrated my life, I became braver. Or maybe I just got sick to death of the damn topic. The more I learned about it, the less scary it became. Knowledge truly is power.

And while cancer is still scary, it doesn’t scare me. Going head-to-head with the beast has taught me an awful lot about myself. Most of it good. I know I can endure a lot, I know what’s really important, and I know that should the disease mount a counter-attack on my battle-weary body, I’ll be armed and ready. Not scared, but ready.