I wish I could choose the manner of my death. It would be swift, unexpected. I don't mind pain; lived through enough to last several lifetimes, and have learned to take it on like a doddering old auntie. However, I suspect I may know the mode of my demise...

Cancer takes time. It steals time. You think you have a life with set mornings, afternoons, chosen evenings. But after the tumor tsunami hits, you have dry-locked land, a dusty dance card filled with the same partner over and over and over, the kind of partner who smells like moth balls, who steps on your feet. You can't escape his sweaty clutch.

Since the initial diagnosis, I sat through: an MRI, a CT Scan, a chest x-ray, five - yes FIVE biopsies, three ultrasounds. My breast looked like swiss cheese.

Doesn't matter how minor, how serious your cancer is; the doctors will poke and prod and analyze the motherfucker until they see and understand every nuance, every cell. Thing is, isn't an exact science. We all have cancer in our bodies at any given moment, but our bodies take care of it, eat it, spit it into waste and dissipated air. What cancer they see today may not be there one week from today, but the decisions and evaluation have been made.

I think about my biopsy samples. I had to wait in a doctor's cold steel bed, only wearing my pants and a pink paper vest covering my breasts. This has been a pink journey: pink housecoats, robes, vests, pink ribbon sculpture and artwork linking walls. Is this comforting or political statement? I honestly can't tell. Pink isn't my color. Even one nurse, a woman who sees a hundred cancer patients a day, looked at me while I sat in a hot pink paper vest, and shook her head.

"Pink just isn't your color."

I know. And breast cancer isn't my thing either, though it apparently thinks it is. Where do we get these wayward lovers?

So, I am doing well nine months later, a little surgery, a little radiation, a little medication. I had the genetic profile ordered by my doctor, and yup, got the BRCA mutations, have a body poised to attack itself. Nothing I can do but eat well, meditate, sleep, and go about the business of living.