So, with the good news, I write to you the journey to get here:

Three weeks passed and I underwent the biopsy. You never remember your dreams in a drug induced sleep, but that day, I dreamt that I was levitating and intertwined in a braided blanket of hopes and dreams, doubts and regrets. I felt warm and cozy with self-righteousness. I saw the expectations that I imposed on others and so fiercely inflicted upon myself. An angel appeared and said, “Dear, dear Gilda, let it be. Let it be.” But I said, “No!” The angel replied, “We are all flawed and imperfect, but worthy of love. You must open your heart and let the universe fill you with what is for you and you leave the rest. You can’t decide what you are given, but you can decide what you give.”

And then I remembered a dark day when I didn’t have answers and tears rolled down my eyes. That windy and dark day, on a pebbled street in a small southern town near a coquina stone Cathedral with majestic stained-glass windows, a Scottish bagpiper played. Then, when under my breath I screamed at the Sky, a song came on the radio:

My heart, my poor heart. All of the love I gave and all of the love that broke, it mingles as fragments in my heart. You can’t see it, but I can feel it. Shards of unkept promises and coarse scars of abandonment, yet there are sparkling crystals of happiness and calcifications of beautiful memories, forever remembered. They say love is in your heart, but all my love all encompassed everything in every cell of my body.

The cardiologist told me my heart was fine. Inflicted with high blood pressure, sure, and probably due to stress and adjusting to the storms of emotions that come with cancer, but fine all the same in a medical sense. I enjoy the hospital, I guess because I don’t feel so alone. It feels safe. But it’s so cold and sterile; Clean and matter of fact. If it’s bad, they don’t say anything at all. I woke to somber faces and shifty eyes, but, like them, I’m used to avoidance.

Then they told me they didn’t get enough tissue and I’d have to have another biopsy. The next time would be in my neck where the PET scan showed “activity.” Have you ever had a PET scan? You sit in a metal room and a nurse comes in with a large metal box. In the metal box is a large metal needle that looks like a gun. Inside is a nuclear amount of sugar that’s injected and you sit still to let your ravenous cancer cells munch on the sugar. After an hour, you’re scanned to see where the most activity was, and that gives a clue to where the cancer is. It’s not a perfect system, but sugar!? What a deceptive indulgence, like some kinds of love.

I had the biopsy of the neck, but they didn’t get enough cells. So, I had to have another lung biopsy. I have 3 tumors in my thoracic lymph nodes that snuggle my heart and aorta, and nodules spread sporadically throughout my lungs. Honestly, the neck biopsy was reaching, they just didn’t want to have to do another lung biopsy putting me under. It was risky, because they could accidentally deflate my lung or puncture my heart. Like, I said, my poor heart, she must feel in danger.

As they were preparing me to be rolled into the operating room, the Dr. stopped in to introduce herself. First, she asked me if anything seemed ‘off’ the first time I went under. I replied, no. She went on to ask if the doctor seemed incompetent. I said, no that I thought he seemed fine. Then, she said, “Your original sample was lost and that’s why we didn’t have enough tissue. We take two samples and one was lost. We have set up a procedure to not lose it this time.” Then, as I couldn’t force my eyes to stay open any longer, I fell asleep and this time it was dark, dark, dark, like all those times I pleaded while kneeling on my floor and watched the door open and I froze with guilt. It must be my fault.

And after three cat scans, 1 Pet scan, and three biopsies, soft voices entered the room, “Gildahh….” Sternly, I interrupted, “GILDA, not Gildahh!” “Well, Gilda, it is indeed metastatic breast cancer, not lung cancer. This is great news.” I stared, but all I could see was a blur of a talking head, I thought, ‘F#@k Off.‘ a pause…… “We thought your original breast cancer was removed, but you know how it is, microscopic cells…we can’t stop them.” ………… All I could do was put my head down in defeat and whisper, ‘F@#k You.’

So, the rebellious, mutating cancer cells attacked the love throughout me, depleted my sanity, it felt like. I tried to walk amongst the rest of us, gripping my secret under my chest, with a big smile. Holding my tears until I got in my car or at home, taking it out on everyone around me. How many of us are out there? Just walking amongst us, with all of these jumbled thoughts of our bodies being taken over by diabolical mutant cells, making plans of how to kill them, starve them, torture them. Thoughts like this alter a mind.

All of it, my own mind mostly, destroyed my love for life and myself, my people. And now that I have settled in to a rhythm. This is life. Dr. appts, work, hobbies, self care, purpose to just keep going… The reframing of how to accept that this as my fate is a journey in itself. …………….. I thought I was going to die. I started giving away my things and renovating my house just in case I didn’t have energy later.…… But now, here I am, still here. It’s been almost 8 months, the winter of my discontent, begging that my sun would stay and it would be an endless summer. I’m sorry.

I’ve been reflecting and taking inventory of how my initial fears grew tentacles that pulled, twisted, and latched on to others to.make me feel secure. I’m ashamed of the spiral I spun in to. I did things I never would have. I betrayed myself, shielded myself from people I loved, and peeked into rooms of envy and spite. I had a hunger for control and it became insatiable. I’m sorry.

I’m slowly releasing my grip. I’m realizing that love is letting it be. Just be. Let everyone just be free to choose what and who and where they want to be. Including me. I’m just so damn mad at myself for things that I did when the thought of cancer took over my mind. Just the thought of it. This isn’t an obvious ailment, you can’t see it, but it manifested in my psyche and I did and said things that I am now ashamed of. I want to say, I am sorry. I am truly, truly sorry. I’m so sorry that I thought I could negotiate with this season in my life and I instead ended up watering my love with poison.

Now, I lean toward softness and look forward to what is coming. Perhaps it will be forgiveness and the return of love, the sun, and if so, the cancer will be overwhelmed and overtaken with the power of it, I will then be filled with light and radiance, and I might, just might, conquer those little f%#ker mutants after all and I will triumph, becoming a warrior of love.

And when the night is cloudy there is still a light that shines on me
Shinin’ until tomorrow, let it be
I wake up to the sound of music, Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be

And let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be

The Beatles, Let It Be

Gallery of symptoms: