The new English teacher—the fourth one in less than three years—looked like a punky Tinkerbell.

She wore her starlight blonde hair pulled into a bun, big oversized glasses perched on her upturned nose (the kind of cute nose I always wished I had) with a dainty twinkling stud. Despite her scarf, a tattooed comet of Fall Out Boy lyrics flowed across her shoulder with a spray of falling stars.

When the nurse called and said, “Your biopsy results show malignant ductal carcinoma in situ,” I was shocked. Did she say, “carcinoma?”

“What?” I sat down. “What do you mean, ‘malignant?’”

She said a few more words and I interrupted, “Wait a minute. Are you saying that I have CANCER?”

“Why me” never crosses your mind. Maybe you feel it’s inevitable; after all, your best friend and first boyfriend both died from cancer—not breast like you, but cancer nonetheless. And your favorite grandfather and most of his brothers and sisters—except the sister who died in the influenza epidemic—died of cancer.