“I have breast cancer. A week ago, I had breast cancer, and the week before that, and the week before that. Maybe five, eight, even ten years ago, the first bad cell split inside me, secretly. But I didn’t know. This is how I arrived at knowing.”
If you haven’t read Xeni Jardin’s very personal account of what it was like to receive a diagnosis she really didn’t want to get, I suggest you click over to Boing Boing now and do so. Last week, in solidarity and friendship with two friends of hers who were recently diagnosed with breast cancer, Xeni made an appointment to have a breast exam, and she took photos during the exam which she tweeted. The idea was to show what happens during a breast exam and to demystify the process, but that was it.
I’m not sure that she would have chosen to go through all of this in public if she knew in advance what the results might be, but I deeply admire the fact that she has.
I do not know all of what’s ahead. I know a little. I know that there is a new kind of life on the other side of this thing. A changed mind and body. A new appreciation of time, and breath, and health, and life, and loved ones.
The gravity in this place is different. I’ve spoken to others who’ve traveled out here, too, and returned home safely. When you become one of them, you learn quickly that you share a language others can’t understand.
The trick, these fellow travelers tell me, is to accept the not knowing and find your equilibrium in that new gravity. Calm the mind. Find your balance out on the cold planet, whether or not you know the next step, or the date of the next appointment, or what good or bad news the Technetium-99 isotopes floating around in your blood during the last scan reveal.
You must be at peace with not knowing, they tell me. That is how you get through outer space, and find your way back home.
The thing about this thing, or, at least, this first week of this thing, is how it takes you out there to the cold planet again and again and again, when you aren’t expecting it. Long, undulating waves of fear pull you out to where you are alone and unreachable, even by words sent from the strongest satellite.
The thing that brings you back is love.
As many of DM’s readers probably know, Xeni Jardin is one of my and Tara’s closest friends and favorite people in the world. As a mutual friend once said of her, “Xeni is like a being from an advanced planet or the future who has come to Earth to help us all evolve faster.” If there’s anyone who can beat this, it is, for sure, our Xenorita, and she is in really good hands, which is a real comfort to all of us who care about her. Send some good vibes—and love—her way in the Boing Boing comments, won’t you?