I've always attached part of my existence to the capacity of writing. Even before I understood that putting different letters together would create words, I would already express myself with colored pencils and white paper. Apart from my sisters, I was not drawing, I was scrapping letters that I saw in my mother's big teacher's books. Growing up, I took a long time to master the spoken language, but I learned how to read and write precociously: at 4 years old. Before I completed my first decade of life, the habit of writing was so mine that the warmth of the words written with my tilted calligraphy on straight lines was strong enough to warm me. And this feeling was so strong and reciprocal that I would write every night before sleeping and consistently, with no exception, I would let a notebook under my pillow. On the attendance list of my bed, there were only three students: me, the notebook, and the pencil. In the future, I am no longer writing my last words before I sleep. At this moment, I'm waiting for the words of a doctor, who reviews, for the last time, what he is going to tell me: the lump in my dominant forearm is a tumor. The words are not necessarily awkward, the doctor probably had told them about a thousand times; they are, however, different for my ears. I start to laugh because I don't know how to react when he tells me that it is rare. Well, winning the lottery is also rare, but that is not the rarity I got. When I leave the clinic, everything in my life goes so fast that it felt like every day was a movie, but I would only watch the trailers, numbed enough not to live any experience. So many things went through my mind non-stop. Sometimes, when I get bad news, everything stops for a second until it gets back to normal speed. I always wish that this moment would last longer, not seconds, but days; which is impossible. Life goes on. Some yet-to-be-introduced character in your life is working at the moment. Some left-too-early character in your life is taking a pet for a walk. Some never-will-be-known character is also receiving bad news and is also wishing time would stop. For this character, time also did not stop. I was not wronged for cutting my frustration short - if anything, this was the reinforcement of my humanity. One day before my surgery, I write my last words in the notebook. It is a farewell letter. I don't know if I am coming back. I don't know if I am coming back horribly limited. I also write my last letter addressed to my grandmother. She died from cancer before I was born, so I never got to meet her. She could not read or write. I always believed I was writing for both me and her. I apologize. I probably am going to lose the last link I have between us. And I am sorry for my father, that will lose in me the last living thing that could remind her mother. Every word she could pronounce I wrote in notebooks spread by the house. At least, that's what he told me. I get into surgery. I thought - and this is something that did not quite change from the past to the present - so ironic that the hand that allowed me to write all my dreams in the format of a poem and all my fears like long proses was, also, the hand that could lose its movements due to a cluster of inconvenient cells that were pressing my tendon. After arriving home, the post-operation pain already was making me feel like the surgery was being performed with me wide awake. I was advised to take sleeping pills. But I did not sleep as fast as it was promised. On the attendance list, the notebook and the pencil did not confirm their presence on my bed. The impossibility of writing about the storm of feelings, fears, and insecurities made me feel everything even more intensely. The lack of the noise of the pencil touching the paper was as if every television, every radio, and every sound machine in the world was turned off at the same time. And I think about Paulo Freire, patron of Brazilian education, and I know his work on “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” does not refer exactly to it, but I feel in a pedagogical oppression scenario. The problem is that the oppressor is my body, and so is the oppressed. No one from my family walks into my room, they don't knock and don't even make any noise. Nobody including a part of mine, who is watchful on the other side of the door, waiting to get in when everything is alright. Which takes some time. Between frustrated attempts of writing with my left hand and tears over the fear of never writing again, this is the very first night I sleep without the notebook under my pillow.

I can't say it was the worst day of my life but by all accounts, it was the scariest. Before that, it was an ordinary day. I was home from school for the holidays. I spent almost the whole day at my neighbor's house talking about everything, played with my nephew, and caught up with some old childhood friends. I walked back home with my dog come evening and greeted my parents who were sitting outside watching the sun set like they always do. Brown, my dog, sat by mum's feet as I proceeded inside to do some evening chores, only mum had done them all. No work for me! I rejoiced and sat down to browse on my phone. It was not unusual for the house to be this quiet but, what was unusual; was for mum and dad to sit together without any form of conversation. Not about the weather or Brown or the usual old couple bickering. My sister, who is a couple years older than I am, is a positive person. She sees the best in every situation no matter how grim; up until the day my mother mentioned that she's going to have a mammogram. Now, forgive my ignorance as I had no clue what that was. In between serving myself supper, I nonchalantly asked, “what's that?” “A mammogram?”. Even before I could say yes, she continued in Swahili, which translated, went something like, “You see, I have been having these pains on my left breast. I've ignored it for close to a year now. Over the past two months, the pain became increasingly unbearable.” This whole time, it doesn't hit me, Cancer! As I devoured my supper scooping food from the edge of the plate, I asked her how exactly a mammogram works. She began to tell me before she could finish I interrupt her and comment, “weren't you supposed to have your eyeballs removed last month?” Everybody at the dinner table, including mum laughs. My dad, then interrupts saying, “no, those were her pupils, I think, or was it Iris?”, hysterics again! But my brother then reminds us that she never actually went through with it because God intervened, even more giggling. Mum then says, "No, they just wanted to add more gel in my eyes because the one I had just didn't cut it. Although, when I went for my final check-up before surgery, they said I no longer needed it." “So", " I interjected, “why don't we ignore the mammogram maybe the pain will disappear?” My sister retorts, “you're sick, Hope!” “What?” I shrugged, “it has worked before, anyway mum, is it like an X-ray? What are they looking at?" "Not what they are looking at but what they are looking for." “What?" My brother yelled from the sink, "Cancer!" and then came the proverbial pin-drop silence. She peeked through the kitchen window, “why isn't anybody talking?" I lift my head from my plate and look at her with the hope that she is joking; she was dead serious. The expressionless face she gave me when I brought not very great grades from my first year of university. I repeated in what seemed like slow motion to me, Cancer? And, without breaking my gaze, I said, "you can't have cancer.” I pick up my half-eaten plate, and leave for the kitchen. I could feel the ground spin beneath my feet. Immediately my mind goes to our neighbor whose mother had died of breast cancer a few years prior. How she painfully explained her mother's pain up until her final moments. How she wished and cried to God that she could take away her pain. It's one thing to know that we are going to die eventually. It's another to have a timeline stamped on it and given their finances and level of medical care, she knew the time would be cut in half. Even from an outsider's perspective, it was the worst experience. I pictured life without a mother, for the first time, I contemplated having kids soon so she can get to meet her grand kids. Before I could spiral any further, mum reminded us it's just a test and it could be negative. If that's the case, we had nothing to worry about Not me, because a few months later when she finally decided to have the mammogram she had me pick up the results. Instructed me to open them and give her the feedback; good or bad. Probably the worst comparison but it felt like receiving my results back in Primary school, heart racing, sweating, shaking, everything. Walking out of the Doctor's office with the huge brown envelope that a nurse handed to me like it was routine for her; it was, gave me a half-smile, and wished me a good day. I wondered how that day could ever be good. On my way into the office, with a concerned look on her face my supervisor asks me, “what's wrong?” “Nothing," I whispered back clearly distracted, "then why does your face look like that," "like how?”, “what's that you are holding?” and without thinking twice, I say, “my mum's cancer results." She let me go to my seat, a few minutes later, I'm aggressively punching into the keyboard, "What's the difference between malignant and Benign tumors." 0.33 seconds later it says, malignant-dangerous, benign, not so much and mom's were benign. I walked out to finally get lunch.