What you don't notice, what you don't realize (at least, not in that moment), is that this gentle man who speaks to you now, will be the same man who leans over you in the operating room and gives the signal for the anesthesiologist to send you off on dreams you won't remember. Before you are completely under, this surgeon leans over you - the drugs have put you in twilight - it's not so bad, you think. It's kind of nice, really. His eyes are blue and large. You notice this, but you can't remember his name. Not now. He says, Everything Will Be All Right. And you believe him. This is the contract of cancer. Absolute faith, based on nothing, but isn't that what faith is? Don't we all take the ontological leap, believe when there is no solid proof. Faith is about believing despite science or logic that may say to the contrary. It is about the intangible. So I have faith, despite statistics, despite prognosis, despite what I've heard and what I've read. I am a confirmed believer. Baptized and delivered. Amen.

The recovery is too awful to bother writing about, and too banal. It's so ordinary. A few details: It hurts like hell. It stinks. It's frightening. When I see my leg, see how much of me is missing, I mourn. I cry for the lost part of me. I cry for lost freckles that once seemed so innocent. I call my mother and tell her, I am dying of freckles, and I laugh through my tears and she laughs through hers. That is all I remember. The rest is a pleasant, poppy-colored blur. It is like living through wrapped gauze, the world is muted.

Returning home is not a home-coming in any traditional sense. When I return home, it is with a daily nurse, sometimes two, a physical therapist (who tells me her fiancé died from melanoma just a month prior - very cheery), an IV drip that sometimes the nurse changes, but eventually, both my husband I will learn to do and will learn the language of hospitals: Heparin lock, a long lead versus a short lead, making sure there are no air bubbles in the line, hooking up the antibiotics and pain killers. This is necessary because of all things, I have contracted a particularly virulent infection in both of my wounds: they call it cellulitus, or necrotizing fascitis. My body is eating itself with infection - with cancer, with cellulitus.

I can't walk, and I have a wheelchair. It is sleek and black and matte it is the Saab of wheelchairs. If you have to have one, this isn't so bad. Mostly, I am in the bedroom upstairs with my IV and lots of films that I'll watch but not remember and a friend by my side. I take pills of different colors: my favorite is one of a deep purple color. It makes the pain go away and everything come in waves. The white ones are tiny, like after-coffee mints. I take them when it starts to hurt.