THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK:

“You need an ultrasound, dear,” she announces matter-of-factly to the entire waiting room but looking straight at me. My stomach seizes. I enter the ultrasound room and a gentle woman rubs gel on my breast and moves the sensor around as she stares at the computer screen. She tells me it’s been a rough day. They’ve had a whole bunch of women diagnosed with suspicious lumps and she’s tired. The seconds tick by in a very silent room.

My surgeon is a blond Amazon — competent, decisive, a woman of few words and little time, but I trust her hands. I’m scheduled for a lumpectomy (partial mastectomy) at Victoria General Hospital on April 19, 2010 — less than three weeks after my initial diagnosis of breast cancer. Thank God I moved to Victoria.

Day one of radiation. I had my CT scan a few days ago and the technician tattooed three tiny black dots around my left breast to guide the radiation machine. Now it’s time to go into the oven every morning for 16 days. I’ve escaped chemo, but radiation is not a piece of cake, as one well-meaning friend ineptly put it.

As I convalesced, I devoured books on cosmology, quantum physics and life after death. In the quiet of my study during a dark and chilly Victoria winter, I listened to online interviews with scientists and spiritual teachers from around the world as they reflected on the evolution of our universe through its endless cycle of creation-destruction-creation.