It started out looking like these bug bites on my wife’s left breast. Before we knew it, the three red bumps transformed into angry lesions, turning her skin darker, ominous shades of red and purple. She said it must be shingles. When it didn’t go away but began to hurt as it hardened and burned. I told her she needed to go to a doctor, but she insisted it was the shingles, and it would go away eventually.
After a couple of months she went to a doctor who agreed it was shingles and prescribed something that didn’t do a thing to help. Then we were scheduled to fly to New York to visit our granddaughter so she didn’t have time to see another doctor about her shingles. This was exactly the same delaying tactic which she ridiculed her mother for using when she was faced with a new medical complication. Funny that what she observed so astutely in her mother she ignored in herself.
Finally she returned to the doctor who said it was the shingles. Now he decided he should take a biopsy. I don’t like that word biopsy. The results came in, and she had breast cancer, not the kind which appears as lumps but one that looks inflamed on the surface of the skin.
This was no time for saying I told you so. We were busy with more doctor visits, more tests and treatments. With no time to waste. Urgent.

(Author’s note: With the approval of my wife, I am starting a weekly chronicle of her illness. She will approve the text before I post it. We have high hopes for her recovery. We are on this journey together.)