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malignant. Five major medical centers couldn’t identify it. I began calling it “Wild Bill.”
    For a little more than two years, I did well except for a bowel obstruction that responded to non-surgical treatment. Every three months I visited an oncologist in Chicago who did tests that I passed with flying colors. After a while, I did not think much about “Wild Bill.”
    After New Year’s this year, I began feeling excessively tired, my back ached more than usual, and I was running a low-grade fever. I was admitted to the hospital for tests. Everything from active TB (I had been exposed at work) to an arthritic condition was considered. As part of the work–up, an MRI of my abdomen was ordered. The test was supposed to take 45 minutes to an hour but stretched into two hours and beyond. My mind and heart raced and tears flowed into my ears like a river. It was the first time I cried over my illness. I could not wipe my tears away and no one could hold my hand, but I knew what the MRI showed was not good. The next day a needle biopsy of part of the tumor confirmed that “Wild Bill” had returned. I felt lost and depressed. All I could think about was Rachel.
    A rather smug but well-qualified surgeon came to see me. “We’ll do an exploratory lap and see what’s what and remove what we can, but I give you no guarantees,” he said.
    When I woke up from the surgery, I listened to those five disappointing hopeless words: “We couldn’t get it all.” They’ve yet to explain exactly what they could and could not get. Depending on whom I talked with, I had at least four different versions. Maddening.
    At first my recovery was fraught with a terrible sadness that I couldn’t shake. I got thinner and thinner and I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep either and hurt too much to toss and turn, so I would lie like a board all night. Even though my family, friends and coworkers all rallied around me, I could not feel any hope. I even wished I had died the night the original tumor ruptured.
    I can’t say I snapped out of it. It was more like a gradual slide. I started chemotherapy and even though I was fearful of that, it gave me hope. Reading books was very positive for me—I read of countless hopeless cases who recovered or lived way beyond expectations. Lived good lives, too. I began feeling better. With the help of a friend and a kind priest, I learned how to pray again. Now Rachel and I pray together every night. I stopped wishing I had died that terrible night in December of 1992.
    Over the last couple of years, so many good things have happened that I would have missed. My older son published his first book, my younger son’s acting career took off again and my daughter and her boyfriend built a beautiful home for their future together. Rachel learned to ride her bike and to read. I resumed an old friendship with a cherished friend. Things that I took for granted were important to me. My sister moved back from California and we can see each other so much more often. If I had died that night I would not have been here to say goodbye to my own dad, who died last fall. Rachel may have never recovered from the trauma and suddenness of it all.
    What I really know now is that we never really know. So now when I wake up, I am grateful for whatever time I have. I feed the birds and stray cats. I pick flowers and plant some. I call my sisters and friends. I help Rachel with her homework. I feel stronger each day. “Hope” is the word, I guess; that is so important now. If I have hope, I can do my best to do all I need to do to get well.
    Mary L. Rapp

Kids with Cansur
    C hildren have a remarkable talent for not taking the adult world with the kind of respect we are so confident it ought to be given. To the irritation of authority figures of all sorts, children expend considerable energy in “clowning around.” They refuse to appreciate the gravity of our monumental concerns, while we forget that if we were to become more