When I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2011, I was inundated with advice on how to cope with this horrifying turn of events: Meditate. Exercise. Visualize happy outcomes. Get massage and acupuncture. Scream when necessary.
That all helped. Still, during the months I gave up both my breasts and a pad of underarm lymph nodes to surgery, underwent eight rounds of chemotherapy and 33 sessions of radiation, and started tamoxifen it was impossible to shake the terror that cancer — a foreign, sneaky, malevolent thing — had invaded my body and was lying in wait to wreck more of me.
