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I'm not Irish but I can remember many lucky breaks in my semi-long life. Two majors: I am in seventh grade, sitting on a bench on a Saturday, waiting for the K bus on Sheridan Avenue in Miami Beach. A car careens into the bench, missing me by a couple of feet. Shouts, fuss, tears, and then the K bus comes and I leave the crashed car behind, knowing that I was lucky young lady.

And another kind of luck.  Last year, I did not fire the well-meaning, over-organized organizer who threw out my file of photos and personal writings.  She then introduced me to the man I have fallen in love with.

But my most obvious stroke of luck happened in late 2006.

I was living contentedly alone, doing publicity for my book, traveling extensively. I flew to Vietnam with a press group and realized I was falling behind as the group walked around. I was skipping activities, going to bed early. Vague symptoms: a tightness, a tiredness, a strange feeling around my head. In Hanoi I found a clinic near the hotel at 2 in the morning. The young doctor could find  no obvious problem.

After Vietnam I traveled on my own to Cambodia. I was conflicted:  I wanted to go home and rest and see a doctor. But then I figured if I were sick I may never have a chance to see Cambodia again.

I had trouble walking around the ancient temples at Angkor Wat. I felt disoriented. I hired a guide and driver to accompany me. It was now obvious that I was feeling worse.

Did I have a stroke? I dreaded the long flight back to the states. but managed. In New York I underwent a full physical with x-rays, and they showed nothing abnormal. But I still felt off.

And so I eventually went to a neurologist and had an MRI of my brain. The doctor said that the MRI showed that the meninges, the linings of my brain, were swollen but it was not life-threatening. He wasn't sure why this happened, but I needed to take it easy and wait. I was worried that the pressure in  my head would increase and my symptoms would get worse, but they remained about the same.

I took another MRI a month later, and got a call from the doctor: The swelling had shrunk. Yea! But wait. Something showed up high  in my right lung. I needed to check it out, and he was adament.

Confusion, scrambling. Friends, family, support. I eventually had a biopsy, in January, 2007.

It was cancer.

But I never smoked. I wasn't coughing. It seemed impossible.

Lung cancer is usually caught when symptoms appear, at stage 3 or 4. But my symptoms had been mainly in my head. They were coincidental, and had nothing to do with cancer.

And here's the luck part. If I hadn't thought I might have had a stroke and taken the MRI of the brain, and, if my cancer had not been high up in my lung so that the MRI for the brain could pick it up, I would probably be dead by now.

And I'm also lucky that I have health insurance in a country where so many are uninsured and would have been unable to afford  the specialists, and wouldn't have found the tumor until it was too late.

I went through a seven-hour operation where the doctor removed one-third of my right lung, even though the tumor was tiny. The malignancy was caught at stage 1a, the earliest possible stage.

People can and do survive lung cancer when it's caught early. The percentages are with me. So my swollen brain was not a stroke, but a literal stroke of luck.

And I am outspoken in my support for health-care reform so that all Americans can get medical help early, and share the same kind of lucky break that I did.