I guess musing on topics like this one is one reason my parents laughed when I got a badge in girl scouts for "A girl scout is always cheerful." Not so much.

I went for my mammogram today and made a decision while she told me to hold my breath & don't move [which, with my breast clamped between glass slides surely would have been a feat].

If and when I do get cancer, I'm not going for the medical intervention. I'm not doing the chemo, radiation, surgery. I'm not doing the peg feeding tubes, the ports, the anti-nausea drugs, the pain killers. I'm taking my same old body with it's new cancer plug and heading home. Settling my stuff. Making the phone calls. And going to work on Monday.

I felt tremendous relief when I decided this and a little click where something fell into place for me, like the cylindars tumbling when you're picking a lock. In a previous blog I wrote on living in a cancer bubble right now where so many people I know are getting it, being treated for it, dying from it. The nurse who did my mammogram today said they always see cancer diagnoses in cycles. For awhile everyone is clear. Then for some reason, every third mammogram comes back with cancer. Yet one more thing doctors have no idea why.

I don't deceive myself that I am an essential employee on this little blue marble. My husband will miss me. Mostly for the yum-yum. But that's why God created mail-order brides. My son will miss me. ("Please take out the trash. Take out the trash? TAKE OUT THAT TRASH!) Ummm, let me get back to you on that. And a handful of family and friends will dial my number when I'm gone, to ask my opinion on something or to tell me Big News! And it will take a minute for them to realize I won't be answering.

At some point recently I lost the conceit that it was necessary I be here.

The people I know getting cancer have no "risk factors." My friend Linda and I are getting the feeling the whole risk factor thing is either obsolete or never really was supported by statistics. Some people just get cancer. Some people don't. And it doesn't matter if you live on Big Mac's or organic lentils.

I celebrate all of the people I know right now with cancer who are going for the interventions and I wish them godspeed and I pray for them. And hopefully they will all go into remission and not suffer too terribly during treatment and will look back on their experience and nod their heads and say they did the right thing.

But I'm not choosing that route. And that's my choice. And thank god we still have free will and nobody can come to my house and force me to undergo chemotherapy.

I'll go to work. And sit on the deck with my dogs. And drink my wine and eat my steak. And walk home slowly with this crazy body who has been with me from birth, I'll walk home slowly and I will not rage against the dying of the light. I will go gentle into that good night.

By Dylan Thomas:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.