Beep Beep

The trap was set. The cayote had been watching the road runner for days running the dirt path beneath the overhanging ledge. It was the perfect spot to finally catch his prey. The Acme Anvil company was able to overnight the appropriate tool for the job and it was waiting. His calculations had been meticulous, he knew the exact weight of the anvil, the exact thickness of the ledge. Every thing had been timed to co-inside with the exact moment when the road runner should arrive on his appointed rounds...but somethng went horribly wrong. The ledge began to crack at the exact moment that he'd expected. He heard the road runner coming. He felt the familiar pang grip his shrunken stomach and grind it into a thunderous ache of hunger. He'd actually salivated in anticipation...and then nothing! No breaking of the earth, no whoosh of air, no booming crash as the anvil landed and no tender meat to boil in his pot. How could this happen? No, it's impossible! The cayote ran to the place where the trap should have worked. Staring desolately at the empty ground he heard the first warning. A small, almost soundless crack; a few falling pebbles, he looked up to where his useless trap was waiting. We all know what happens next. Even the cayote should have been able to guess it. The ledge and anvil pummled down and smashed the hapless cayote into the ground where his dinner should have been waiting...beep beep.

This is kind of what living with breast cancer is like. The cancer sets the traps, the lumps are found. The tests are done. Everything should be in place to catch me, the road runner, once again in the trap of cancer. Then the imaging tests and the pathology reports come back and once again I'm singing beep beep and running off into the distance. But I am not so brave or arrogant as the road runner. I worry about what is waiting on those overhead ledges and what trap could be lurking in those circles marked with an x on the road ahead. I wake up sitting straight up, covered with sweat and trimbling from the nightmares of chemotherapy. Stage 4 cancer is like a hungry cayote out there, watching, setting traps. I wonder when he will catch me.