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We took the car on our way home, and Dorothy set about making light of things for me and laughing with me until the driver wondered at so much laughter. When we arrived we began to discuss the doctor's verdict, of which we had received the like from another doctor. And we discussed the future of the children—and my own future. Yes, I said my future, because I forgot that I had no future; the talk that had passed on the road made me forget the truth. I kept thinking that the doctors had made a mistake and that perhaps there was hope of a cure. Alongside this thought, I was thinking that the miracle I awaited might pass me by and I would die, and people would gather around me knowing how I had longed to live! And now, if no hope of life remained to me, was there not a lesson for my children in my death? But what lesson? So the thoughts circled about me without my finding anything clear about cancer. In sleep and in waking, in speech and in silence, the specter of cancer hung over me, toying with that life it had struck.
Then I entered the hospital to receive the radium treatment, and the nurses, the sisters, and Dorothy surrounded me with every kindness and care. Dorothy kept assuring me that the food was excellent, but I held back from it, because it was still 'hospital' food! And when visiting hours ended and my sister went away, I would feel a painful loneliness that wrung my very soul...
It was summertime, and yet I shivered with cold; I hesitated to ask for a cup of tea or some lukewarm water, and soon drowsiness overcame me, and I dozed off.
In the morning I found comfort in the fact that the operation was performed with such ease and speed. Two nurses came and took me into the operating room; the doctor came and gave me the anesthetic, and I no longer felt anything. I came to and found myself in my room, with a pain caused by the radium, so I made myself forget what was in me by reading. And here I felt something of hope stealing back to me. The outcome was in the hands of God,