“In all instances, there are two words that encapsulate what good and bad omens share: Why not? Why not be cautious when my gut makes my hair stand at attention, and why not hope when there is nothing but hoping to do?”

“I am well practiced at stuffing feelings aside until later—or until never—in favor of being less late for the next child and family.”

“Living with metastatic breast cancer…I dance, practice yoga, walk, parent my children, show up at school events, go on dates with my husband, and enjoy a glass of wine. So when I tell people that I will be in treatment for the rest of my life…they are incredulous.”

Though just in my late 30’s at the time, my doctor referred me to a cardiologist because of a family history of heart disease

Visiting the family cemeteries often, the stones then looked back with deeper meaning. Men dying in their 30’s and 40’s. Heart disease, death certificates read. Still, no big deal, I got a heads-up, and had options they never had the luxury of.

My poem “LDL” was written during an old house renovation and preparing for an anatomy and physiology exam (I was also patching together a non-traditional Bachelor’s degree). I found it peculiar that I had no real fear of death, only of being somewhere without my wife.

Although many of my non-fiction stories dwell on loss, there is always a lesson to be learned or an inspiration which somehow has evolved into compassion. In “The Lingerie Shop” (Spring 2025 Intima), I recall my adolescent years when I learned about my mother’s breast cancer. I was haunted by her embarrassment and loneliness. The emotions were part of my upbringing and I lived side by side with them. It must have changed me. I attended medical school and became a gynecologist, caring for many women with breast cancer. My loss had metamorphosed into strength and compassion. My loss made me a better doctor.

I met my husband, Kim, on a bone marrow transplant unit in a cosmic display of foreshadowing ten years before the happenings in my piece “Suffer the Little Beagles.” I was First Lieutenant Schuerman serving as a bone marrow transplant nurse. He was a Captain who had ventured up four floors to place his pathology report in a patient’s chart. Over the next decade we married, I became an attorney, we became civilians, I gave birth to our daughter, and we bought a big house. He told me about his deep bruises and enlarged spleen the night we lay exhausted on our bed after having received our household goods.

We carry them in our thoughts and in our prayers. It is the unspoken in the medical field. The hesitation you feel, to show at times, you hurt for them, with them, through them. The patient unaware that emotion is viable and present when treating, caring, or guiding steps to an end, no matter what that may be. Their physical bodies are present at the appointments, but their souls are searching elsewhere for meaning. The “why” of illness.