I Am One Lucky B*tch (Yet Again)
I knew I was going to write this entry today. What I didn't know was whether to title it "Fck, I Have Cancer" or "I Am One Lucky B*tch Yet Again." I'm going with the latter. But it was a close call.
There's such a thing as the terrible twos. Usually people mean toddlers throwing open the gates of hell. But I made my own version: at 18, two tumor scares in my brain. At 20, two biopsies on my cervix.
I wrote about this recent second scare before I left Dallas for winter break. At that point, the doctors had urged me not to stress—precancerous cells are not cancerous cells—yeah, like that’s so clear.
So I carried on, business as usual, even laughing when Mr. International kept asking me whether I'd rather have a gynecologist tell me I was pregnant or that I had cancer. Maybe I should have thought harder before I instantly said "not pregnant!" — but I have a college degree to finish, and that has to come first.
So yeah, last Monday, I was almost out the door of the doctor’s office after being told all is well. My purse was already slung over my shoulder when the nurse practitioner noticed — before the doctor even did — that something was abnormal on my chart.
It wasn't pregnancy. So that meant it had to be…
I was sat right back down. I heard the word biopsy. I basically blacked out.
But I asked for it to be done that day.
The doctor explained there was a good chance she'd just look around and not find anything worth biopsying. But then I heard her count — one, two — as she pulled out two biopsy kits. And all I could think was: here we go again. The terrible twos.
The wait was only a week this time, not six months — aka that fun period in my life when they thought I had brain tumors but said, wait six months and we'll know. But a week is long enough. Long enough for something like a can opener to start working on you, prying up uncomfortable conversations in other parts of your life, forcing openings you didn't know you needed. Growth disguised as waiting.
And just like last time, thankfully, the scare was the worst part: both biopsies came back negative.
I'm still not sure what to make of all this. It's a lot to carry before you're even 21, before you're what the law considers a full human being. Two years, four scares. And I can’t even drink??
What I keep coming back to is how much unearthing happens in these moments. When you lose trust in your body — when a part of you becomes something to monitor, something that might betray you — you're forced to reckon with how connected everything really is. How much can quietly fester when life keeps throwing weather at you, and how, when it finally rains, it absolutely pours.
But here's what I've learned: when you're willing to trade the comfort of sunlight for the uncertainty of the moon, the dark of the night, you find new ways to illuminate. You develop tools you didn't know you needed.
Cut a plant and it grows back taller. Let fire touch dry grass and it burns— and then it fertilizes. These scares have reminded me, again and again, how miraculous it is just to be alive. That parts of our bodies can become compromised — even the brain, the very seat of everything we are — and life continues. Life deepens. We even grow.
So if you take anything from this wild, ongoing story of mine: there is a lot of divinity in this world, and there is a lot of growth waiting to be unearthed in the places where you've lost sight of the light.
Here's to being a lucky b*tch. And to the terrible twos being behind me — for good.