I've heard that many patients develop a crush on their surgeon. It's only natural. He is your savior. All those things you wanted in a man when you were young, before you became an educated feminist and you wanted a savior, a man who was strong and lean and could carry you if he had to. You want the modern-day equivalent of a cave man who will take care of everything so that you don't' have to worry. You want the man who can fight off the bad guys and win. A guy who can fight. It's visceral, it's probably politically incorrect, but it's true. What bad guy could be worse than cancer? So David fights them off, and Lo! He wins. He is my instant hero. And as unfair as I know this is to my husband, to others I love, it is David that I put on a silver pedestal. And though in any other circumstance I don't think I would be attracted to him, years later I find myself strangely drawn to him. I believe the thing that draws me to David is a similar mechanism to the thing that drew my husband to that woman at work. At its root, it is about language and communication; David and I speak the same language. It may be morbid, at times technical, but at its heart, it is about saving a life. My husband seeks out his own savior; someone to lift him out of this grief, this dark, thin place.

So how do I thank him - this man who has held my life and given it back so gently? Several surgeries later, all performed by him, all for cancer, how do I thank him. He's kept me alive, kept me out of pain, he's been my number one advocate, he's told me I'm 'tough.' He's told me, 'You've been through a lot,' though I ever thought of it that way. I just made my way - groped the dark corridors and prayed I'd come out the other side. In all of this, I never felt sorry for myself. I felt sorrow, I felt grief, I felt rage, and I felt regret, but never self-pity. Is that hard to believe? It's the truth. I was too busy fighting, too busy dealing with just getting through. There was no room in my schedule for such pity.

If I felt sorry for anyone, it was those I love, as I've said. For them, I felt sorry. Sorry that I was the cause of their pain. Yet if anyone I love had to get cancer, I am still glad that it was I, because if it had been one of them, I honestly think I couldn't handle it. Then I would rather die. Then I would feel sorry for myself, because without them, I am nothing. It is through them that I live. It is through them that I do good deeds and bad, that I comfort and hold, that I listen to and vent to, that I depend on and always will. Without them, I don't even know if exist. And my best friend, without him, should it have been he got the cancer and not I, then I would shatter and splinter like glass. Once, he was in a cycling accident too awful for words. He shattered and almost lost his arm. He held the pieces together with a magazine as he lay on the road and drifted in and out of consciousness. When the medi-vac helicopter arrived, he coded - he died - and had to be revived. When he arrived at the hospital, he was rushed to surgery, and again he died. Again he was revived.