Thoughts upon hearing the diagnosis

What do you think when you've just been told you have cancer? The scene is burned in my brain: We're in a little curtained cubicle in an emergency room. It's about 5:30 in the morning. I'm sitting up in the bed, and Saint H is huddled on a bright orange plastic chair. Saint H is ghostly white and staring. And all I can think is, "dammit, I don't have a horse yet." That set the tone for most of my reactions. I was angry and determined that I wasn't going to die - no hey-presto-poof! for me, thank you. We had plans, and we had things to do, and I wasn't about to give up.

That was nearly 6 years ago. Since then, we've bought our little farm, and we've built a house and moved to the farm. Both of us grew up on farms and had talked for 10 years about starting one of our own, and so we did it when we had the chance. And we've visited friends in Australia - we highly recommend Coffs Harbor, by the way.

Some relevant quotes:

• In "A Pirate Looks At Forty" Jimmy Buffett sings, "I'd rather die while I'm living than live while I'm dead."
• In the fabulous film "Strictly Ballroom" one of the major premises is "A life lived in fear is a life half-lived."
• My dear friend and sister C2 has a sign that sat on her desk for years: "Life is not a dress rehearsal."

A diagnosis is unwelcome news, but it's not an immediate death sentence - most of us have time to pursue more than a few dreams in the meantime. And the horse? Two years ago, we adopted a 21-year old registered Morgan showhorse (retired) who needed a new home. Now, dammit, I don't have a barn yet.