Please Talk about Me When I'm Gone

Premonition

(2000)

She can't remember the last time she caught a cold.

This isn't to say she didn't catch them, or suffer from allergies, reflux, chronic lower back pains, frequent urinary tract infections, headaches, fatigue, anxiety, and depression. Rather, an ingrained reaction to any illness caused her immediately to consider her mother-her mother's symptoms, and her own symptoms less than three years earlier (her mother had persistent pain behind her eyes that became too intense to tolerate and by the time they saw a doctor it was too late; she herself came back from summer vacation in 1997 with stomach pain that became unbearable overnight, escalating the suspicion of food poisoning to appendicitis until a surgeon discovered a tumor undetected behind her appendix, like the moon being covered by a cloud).

Ever since her mother's death in 1980, a recurrent cough or soreness would open the almost infinite portal of possibility. Is this how it starts? Is this fever what I'll remember as the first symptom that set the final sickness in motion? Is this ache a calling card of damaged cells that returned from the wrong side of town bringing the worst kind of bad news?

She could no longer simply endure the routine bouts of bronchitis without contemplating the history of maladies ranging from the ordinary to the exotic. This is what her mother's death did to her. This is what her own recent scare-the symptoms, the surgery, the recovery, the prognosis-had done to her.

Until 1997 it was more indulgent, almost superstitious, like obsessing about whether or not she'd locked the door or turned off the iron even though she knew she had, the sort of compulsion that practice, and medication, had helped her control. Now the trauma of her operation had provided context, a foundation to validate, even provoke her phobias. She knew this could go nowhere good, but she also knew there was nowhere good cancer could go.

After 1997 she didn't need to feel any symptoms at all. At any time, all those images and memories might flash through her mind, capable of derailing-in an instant-the best day she might have been enjoying. Paranoia or a premonition? She couldn't know until she knew, and then, of course, it was too late. But even those thoughts were (mostly) manageable, understandable even. Who could blame her for thinking such thoughts? Not her doctors. Except that now she was dealing with a new type of dread and it tended to wait until the middle of the night. It would wake her from wherever she had been (the bliss or oblivion of her dreams) and the urgency of an unanswerable question would render her breathless, immobile in her bed: What if it's still inside of me? What if it has already come back?