After I Die from Ebola

Two weeks ago, I went to the doctor. She wrote up a pathology form for a mammogram, which I took home and stashed on top of the five other unfulfilled mammogram requests she’s written for me in the past year.

It’s not that I’m an irresponsible patient. I get annual pap smears, have the right insurance, and do my EEGs as ordered. I face the risks of my medical condition like Dirty Harry because you’ve got to ask yourself one question: “Do I feel lucky?” Well, do ya, punk?

And when it comes to my epilepsy and the risks of its medications, I do feel lucky. I always pass the tests these days, and if I didn’t, the consequences would be easy to take: add 5 milligrams to Anticonvulsant X and bring down your stress levels.

Easy.

I don’t feel that lucky about mammograms. My mother died of breast cancer. This disease is written into my genes, but if I ignore it, I’ll die from Ebola or Progeria: illnesses that are so unlikely and foreign that I can’t quite picture them, which means I can live my entire life feeling too lucky to die.

Besides, everyone knows you can only get breast cancer by doing a mammogram. That’s why I’m staying away from the radiology department. Ebola, here I come. 

My mother’s breast cancer was stealthy. Before it was visible on her PET scan, it had already spread to her liver, sacrum, and lymph nodes. The cancer that started it all looked like a sprinkling of light so diaphanous you could mistake it for fairy dust, but it was an aggressive motherfucker. In one ineffable minute, she was dying.

I will do this mammogram. I declare it to the sky just as I did the last time and the time before that. This time, I really will. I mean, I know I said that in November, but this time is different. It really is. That’s why I keep my mammogram forms in a convenient place: so that when I finally get ‘round to making the appointment, I have the necessary paperwork.

I’ll get to it when I’ve recharged my phone. I mean when I’ve completed this deadline. After I’ve done the fifth EEG this year. After I’ve found the damned forms. After Valentine’s day. I mean Easter. After I die from Ebola.