I called my best friend in California, and got her voice mail. “I just got off the phone with my doctor,” I said. “And to give you an idea of how it went, I’m wondering a lot about my hair and my access to pot.” Moments later she called back, and channeling her inner John McEnroe, bellowed into my phone, “THIS IS BULLSHIT.” It was, coincidentally, her mother’s birthday. She would have been 72, had she not died of cancer when Sharon was a teenager. 

I ate pretzel bites and jalapeño cheese for lunch, because, what the hell. I went to the movies. I threw a coin into the fountain at Lincoln Center and made a wish. I laughed at the perfect timing of it all when the Five Stairsteps’ “Ooh Child” came up on my iPod’s shuffle. I hid behind my sunglasses on the A train, tears streaming down my face. I told my daughters that Mama is sick, and she’s probably going to have to go through chemo like Grandpa did. “But then you’re going to get better, right?” my elder daughter asked. “I’m going to try really hard,” I replied. 

On Thursday I spent several hours at Sloan-Kettering, answering questions and filling out forms. I sat in a waiting room full of quietly frantic-looking people watching “Deal or No Deal” and availing themselves of the free coffee. A young woman in lace knee socks, plaid miniskirt, and Led Zeppelin T-shirt typed lazily on her phone. I don’t think her peach fuzz hairstyle was a fashion statement. 

Next week, I am going back to have a portion of my scalp removed, and flesh from either my neck or my thigh grafted onto it — we don’t yet know which. Apparently the surgeon likes to wing it, skin graft-wise. I will wake up with a ping pong ball-size permanent bald spot, and a badass scar that I intend to go around telling people I got in Desert Storm. I am going to have lymph nodes removed and biopsied. And then, my new cancer doctor tells me, once we get the results from all that, we can begin my “treatment.” 

A million years ago — Tuesday night — I went out for drinks with my agent, which was enough to make me lament my literary prospects and the folly of ever choosing to become a writer. “Why couldn’t I have been good at math?” I had cracked. I also can’t dance. I’m bad at sports. My navigational sense is so remedial I get lost in a grid system. I am unable to follow even simple directions, whether it’s a recipe or the assembly instructions for an IKEA shelving system. And I am pretty inept at self-diagnosing cancer.

But so far this year I’ve posed nude in a magazine, chased a pair of muggers into a Bronx housing project, swung on a trapeze, splashed in the ocean with my daughters, and opened my skeptical heart to love again. In November, I am going to Costa Rica to surf and party with monkeys. I’m crappy at a lot of stuff, but I am phenomenal at telling fear to suck it so I can go about the business of living. And so while I don’t know what the future holds, with every breath in me, I’m going to keep doing what I do best. And live.