Good day. I’m Stacey Fortune, former manager of marketing communications for the Canadian division of Viva Rica! The Essence of Inspiration!

What’s that, you ask?

Viva Rica is a carefully crafted and ludicrously expensive blend of eighteen essential superfood extracts that supports and stimulates the flow of health and wealth to a handful of folks at the top of the company pyramid, by pushing highly sophisticated twenty-first-century brainwashing sales and recruitment bullshit through a dedicated network of wishful-thinking super juice junkies. We’d be proud to have you and your twenty closest friends join our rapidly growing global distribution family! The greatest journey starts with one small sip!

That’s the kind of marketing prowess that could have earned me the prestigious Viva Rica Juicy Details Award, which recognizes excellence in convincing desperate people that pawning off crates of fifty-dollars-a-bottle blueberry juice on their friends and family is their ticket to entrepreneurial bliss. Unfortunately, I lacked the kind of bubbly ambition that would have helped me float all the way to the top of the Viva Rica pyramid. Probably because I didn’t drink enough super juice. It gave me gut rot.

How about an introduction that’s a little more down to Earth? One where my pants are clean but not fancy, my hair is only a tad ratty, and my voice has just the faintest hint of a charming yet ambiguous East Coast accent.

Hihowareyataday, I’m Stacey Fortune. Up until two weeks ago, I was the picture of a strong, successful, independent urbanite woman. I had a mediocre career, an overpriced condo in downtown Toronto, and a hilarious story about how I empowered myself to blow gobs of money on stupid shit in the name of retail therapy after I gave my cheating fiancé the boot. Then I got diagnosed with three highly unpredictable — and certainly inoperable — brain tumours, which sporadically turn my limbs to Jell-O, my eyes to kaleidoscopes, and my head into a world of hurt. Now, I’m holed up in my mother’s small and scruffy trailer on small and scruffy Cape Breton Island, holding out little hope that the doctors in this Have-Not Hellhole can do much to stop me from morphing into a paralyzed bag of piss, drool, and babble before I unceremoniously croak.

Hair, pants, and tone be damned, let’s just cut to the chase.

Hi. I’m Stacey. But you can call me Crow. How ’bout bein’ nice to me. I’ll be dead soon.

A few pages in, and I just blew the ending of this story. That’s all right. It’s painfully predictable anyway. I really should have just written Girl gets tumours, girl loses mind, girl dies, the end on a sheet of loose-leaf, slapped it in a damn Duo-Tang folder and been done with it. But that is not the style of a masochistic narcissistic drama queen such as myself. Get comfy and get the tissues, dear. This here is a proper Cape Breton tale of shame and woe. Grabs at the heart strings and tugs.