But life under siege hides none of its difficulties. The endless decisions that must be made, each imperative and of great consequence, do not wait for us to manage our fear. Indeed, one is always thrust into the world of cancer, and there is no escort. When I was so thrust, I uncannily met my counterparts, Janice and Tom. Janice was a strong, determined woman who believed primarily in self. She did not believe in medicine and therefore put her entire well-being and treatment into her own hands. She rejected all medical intervention, and if she utilized anything greater than her self, it remained a secret liaison till the end. She was tenacious but died a painfully drawn-out death. Now, there isn’t a doctor’s visit I don’t feel Janice over my shoulder. I understand her resistance more and more, for the things we’re asked to do to preserve our well-being are not pleasant. Yet in the hard breath before each decision, I see her reliance solely on self and fear its imbalance.

Tom, on the other hand, was adrift. He seemed to have lost his sense of self and had a disinterested entropic view of the world. He put his fate completely in the judgment of medicine. And so, I watched Tom grow smaller in the space he took up. I watched Tom give no resistance whatsoever to what doctors wanted to do. The English poet William Blake said, “Without contraries there is no progression.” Tom presented no healthy contrary, and thus, there was no progression. He became invisible, vanishing piece by piece. By Christmas of that year, he no longer knew who I was. By February, he died.

I feel roughly blessed to have Tom and Janice as specters of where I must not go, though the further I travel here, the more compassion I have for how easily, in any given moment, the Tom in me or the Janice in me can take over.

While Tom and Janice died, I was broken and healed and broken again. The first time, my tumor vanished. It was a miracle. When its sister began to thicken the rib in my back, I began with fervor the same rigorous visualizations and meditations and intensive prayers for hours each day, desperate to enlist the same overwhelming grace. But after six weeks, I was exhausted and humbled, for the tumor in my rib had only grown. I thought I had failed. The fear returned, now as terror. And in making my decision to have that rib removed, I heard Janice spurn my doctor and saw Tom with indifference bow. But I believe in God and in this strange familiar terrain, known as me, in which life and He meet. So, I waited till these elements merged, way down beneath my understanding, and there, in what felt like calm balance, I said yes, help me. With that, it became clear that this time, the surgery was the miracle.