“Keep looking where the light pours in.” Morgan Harper Nichols

I failed the mammogram.

Things really got rolling a few days later during the ultrasound. The radiologist stood at my bedside as I asked some questions.  While she was careful NOT to say what it was, she was very firm about what it was NOT.  I left with an intuitive understanding that it was something.  This would be confirmed soon enough by a pathologist.

In the interim, I was referred to a surgeon, a brilliant and energetic young woman who loves science and trendy shoes.  At our brief visit, she remained optimistic that it could still be nothing.  Nonetheless, surgery was scheduled, even as I prepared for a biopsy the next morning. 

I left the surgeon’s office with a busy mind and a tight schedule.  I was due at work shortly, not really enough time to settle in at home, and maybe not a good idea even if I had had the time.  It seemed to me that an asiago cheese bagel was in order.  I took the advice attributed to the early Greek physician Hippocrates, and I headed to my local Panera to fill his prescription:  Let thy food be thy medicine…

As it turned out on that day, my local Panera was not so much a dispensary as it was a most unusual monastery.  In what would become a reversal of my misfortune, I found myself standing at a counter with the bread of life stacked on metal racks behind it.  A holy man graciously took my order.  Just as I was about to insert my debit card into the card reader, the monk said, “There will be no charge for you today.”

“Why is that?”

“It is Halloween.”  And as he said this, he looked so deeply into my eyes that he seemed to take hold of me.  So moved was I by his gaze that his eyes could have been the eyes of The One.  And then he said, “God bless you,” and the light poured in.  While doctors had looked inside my body and proclaimed me ill, he looked inside my soul and proclaimed me blessed.  

I moved to a table where I enjoyed my bagel and counted my blessings, among them excellent health and good medical insurance, wonderful friends who infuse me with laughter, the company of countless women who have gone before me and those who travel travel with me now, the remarkable emerging science and technology that makes the treatments our mothers received seem barbaric and my own treatment seem like science fiction, a specialty breast cancer treatment center practically at my doorstep, and a lifetime grounded by a faith tradition promising that there is something greater than me, and that when this life is over, I will be gathered to my people.  How lucky am I to live with so many resources and so much hope?

Yes, the Paneran monk was a messenger: I am blessed.

More to come.

Of this I am sure.