Six months before this, a doctor had phoned me with the news: suspicious for malignancy. For quite some time, my body had been sending signs'fatigue, bloating, light bleeding'but I had dismissed them for various reasons. I'd been raised to diminish my needs; my doctors didn't seem concerned; I'm a mother working two jobs and didn't have time to be sick. The official diagnosis came shortly thereafter, during surgery: ovarian cancer. Dinner was quiet. I was usually the one who started the chitchat about school, swim team, and chemo side effects. But that evening, I was consumed by visions of other tumors, growing undetected in other bodies. 'The silent killer' is ovarian cancer's nickname. My cancer was so silent that two gynecologists hadn't considered it as a possible diagnosis, and at least one radiologist had entirely missed my tumor'as wide as a peach and as long as my hand. While I was on tour for my first book, a work of fiction, many readers asked if it was autobiographical. I...
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