April is the cruelest month
breeding lilacs out of the dead land
mixing memory and desire
stirring dull roots with spring rain. T.S. Eliot

I think that is how it goes it is my poem for April anyway. Here, in the desert, it is the cruelest month because we know that the heat is coming. Our harsh time, our Minnesota winter. The time for hibernation and contemplation.

Mornings are difficult because I wake, energy levels low and the dawn not yet breaking. I struggle to find peace, to remember my strength. I search for it inside of me. It is supposed to be there. It struggles to wake up just like me. I am strong, healthy and at peace.......I will do this...

I have DCIS. ductal carcinoma in situ. It was described to me to be something like this. A teenaged boy is drunk out of his mind and has the keys to the car in his hand but he hasn't gotten into the car yet. I have to stop him. I will any way I can. It is really upsetting to get this diagnosis despite people saying congratulations to me and adding, "you have the good kind". What does that mean? Good Kind? The best of the worst, I suppose. I realize there are worse things but sitting here with this shit growing in me is scary, very scary.

I was sent to have a bilateral MRI which I have come to understand as the new standard protocol because, the theory goes, if one has the conditions for cancer in one area of the breast then it is not unlikely to find it some place else. Ask for it and you will get it. They found SOMETHING ELSE. I don't know what it is, if it is anything. Could be a false positive or something worse, something dire, say, stage 4 metastatic cancer that has spread all over and explains the little nagging pains I have in my side a 3:30 am.

NEXT: The girls are a lot of trouble now