{"id":7061,"date":"2013-10-07T15:15:47","date_gmt":"2013-10-07T19:15:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beginnersheart\/?p=7061"},"modified":"2013-10-07T15:15:47","modified_gmt":"2013-10-07T19:15:47","slug":"mammograms-gratitude-and-ordinary-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2013\/10\/mammograms-gratitude-and-ordinary-life.html","title":{"rendered":"mammograms, gratitude, and ordinary life"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"mammogram\"<\/a>Today was a good day. Even though — in part because of? — I had a mammogram.<\/p>\n

An aside: no woman in her right MIND enjoys a mammogram. But as the sister of a 13-year breast cancer survivor, I’m so very grateful for the process. And I’m grateful for being\u00a0 insured, since right-wing politics have made it increasingly difficult for the uninsured (re: the less-than-comfortably-well-off) to get them.<\/p>\n

But there’s one problem, as a Buddhist woman waiting for the results of her mammogram: Buddhists are always trying to put themselves in the other person’s place. Which means that while my mammo is routine — just a check on my annual physical to-do list — some other woman this week is sweating her results, wondering if the lump she found is cancer.<\/p>\n

I don’t think I have cancer. Still, as I wait for the expected results, I am connected with that other woman. My ordinary life — this brilliant fall weather, the great salad I made us for lunch — is perfect. There’s nothing special about this day, but I realise that for someone, the next few days may be her last days w\/out the spectre of cancer shadowing her ordinary days.\"2012-09-09<\/a><\/p>\n

So I’m offering up my gratitude for a day full of pulling out grapevine, even though the blackberry stickers left me bloody. And a day of light sunburn from the warm fall light. A day of great tea, drunk on the deck while the birds squabble over the feeders (as if there weren’t enough!). I offer the elderly cat at the bird saucer, the dog chasing a cicada, the blue Oklahoma sky to the women whose lives may well change radically this week, in gratitude that mine (probably…hopefully!) will not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today was a good day. Even though — in part because of? — I had a mammogram. An aside: no woman in her right MIND enjoys a mammogram. But as the sister of a 13-year breast cancer survivor, I’m so very grateful for the process. 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