17 Minute Mile

I'm telling everybody in pre-op that will listen that I'm not having an abortion and even the ones who aren't  listening. They have given me some medication, but its not enough to stop my fears and the terror pulsing through my veins. The nurse tells me she knows I'm not having an abortion, it's a d&c not a d&e, she knows she knows..... They wheel me into the operating room and all I can think, and say, is how pretty the heat lamps are.

The next thing I feel is the tube come out of my throat, fast, and with a huge gulp of air, I realize I'm not actually dead. I know that I'm missing some pieces here because they are giving me cytotec and it feels like they are rolling down the hallway while doing it and why would they move me while giving a suppository? Why did they wake me up first? I'm crying, they are telling me they got it all, tumor, but all I want is to hold my six week old son. I keep asking them to bring me my baby.

I learn later that they didn't get it all. That its spread to my lungs. Malignant, metastatic choriocarcinoma. Not cancer lite. Not a molar pregnancy. Not "just a little extra blood and placental tissue." These are all terms they have used to describe my mystery symptoms, most of which mimic pregnancy or postpartum, which I am. The pathology confirms what my oncologist already assured me I have, and chemo starts next Monday.

I would like to welcome you to my journey of battling cancer in my 29th year. I invite you to laugh, cry, and cheer with me. I'd like you to feel my highs and lows, and I want to know about yours. I have this theory you see. Before I got pregnant with my son, I had probably only ever run maybe a mile. Probably walked half of it. It was probably a 17 minute mile. I decided that I wanted to run a 5k by my thirtieth birthday. Things got busy, I had a minor injury when running on the treadmill, and I stopped training. I think the universe noticed this and decided that this just wasn't good enough. I had to have a miracle baby who should not have survived, instead, should have been overtaken by his suspected, possible, probable tumor of a twin brother. Then I had to beat a cancer that is only one in a hundred thousand. Well, one in twenty thousand to one hundred thousand. If we are going to get all technical. And all before I turned 30 on October 23, 2013.

What the universe wasn't banking on?

Me, being one in a million..