So I'm a little emotional.

I am a fearful person; I am afraid of many things. The quasi-comprehensive list of the things I am afraid of is as follows [listed from minimal to incapacitating]: using someone else's bathroom -> spiders -> being punched in public -> large manila envelopes -> immigration officers -> being sent to prison for a crime I didn't commit -> cancer.

Cancer beats everything. It's like rock paper scissors. Paper beats rock. Cancer beats the whole fucking world. It's completely terrifying to me that my body could right now at this very moment be slowly turning against me.

My brother-in-law went to the dentist three years ago to have his wisdom teeth removed and walked out of the building with gum, jaw, and sinus cancer. Inoperable. They tested him and found out it was in his lymph nodes. They gave him two weeks to live. He wound up making it through those two weeks, so they started him on chemo after they removed half of his jaw and the roof of his mouth. He's still alive and -from what I hear- doing well, but neither he nor my sister will answer/ return any calls. They're in hiding. I don't blame them.

Last week the side of my face swelled up for no reason. It went on for days. I was having trouble eating and sleeping because my face and jaw hurt so much. It hurt to talk. Finally, we decided to go to the ER in the middle of the night because it had gone on long enough. I was terrified that it was cancer and the doctor would walk in, disheveled and sad, to tell me that they were going to have to remove my entire face. Or something. I cried the whole time. The nurses and doctors looked at me like I was crazy. I couldn't stop crying. At least three people filed in, looked at the inside of my mouth, left the room. A resident, a sweet, pimply boy who couldn't have been much older than me walked in with a serious look on his face and handed me something they'd just printed for me to read. It was headed: Treating cold sores.

I'd never had one before! How was I supposed to know they could be so painful?

So. Today at 2pm I have an appointment with a dermatologist to have something biopsied, which is a terrible, despicable word. But I am trying to keep the image of myself hysterically crying in my hospital gown, hunched over on the examining table in some storage closet in the ER, looking incredulously at the chubby resident and half-shouting 'COLD SORE?'. Maybe this will keep me from making a spectacle of myself. Again.