This is where it started. Newest at the top, like the front page, so if you want to read it in order, start at the bottom and scroll up.

It started coming out in the shower Thursday, the way they said it would, right on schedule. By this morning there was more on my pillow than on my head, and I decided I was done watching it go a little at a time. I'd rather it be my idea.

So after supper Mark put a kitchen chair on the back deck and got out the clippers he uses on Josh's hair every summer. He did mine very gently, like he was afraid he'd hurt me. Nobody said anything. Then he handed the clippers to Josh and sat down in the chair himself. Josh gave him a mohawk first, of course, and Mark let him, and made us all look at it before Josh finished the job. Then Mark ran his hand over his own head and over mine and said, "There. Now nobody has to stare at just you."

Kelsey took pictures with the camera and then went up to her room and shut the door. About an hour later she came back down and rubbed both our heads without saying anything and went back upstairs. Twelve is hard. Twelve with a bald mother is harder.

My head is cold. Who knew your head gets cold in July?

Round one of eight is in me. I watched the Adriamycin go in. It's red. I don't know why nobody warns you how red it is. Pam, the nurse, sat right beside me the whole time and told me about her daughter's wedding so I wouldn't think about it. I'll love her forever for that.

The lady in the next recliner had on a turban and bright lipstick and she leaned over and said, "First time? Bring socks. It's cold in here. And eat something plain before." Then she went back to her magazine. Best advice I got all month.

They gave me Zofran in the IV and a bottle of it to take home, and so far, knock on wood, it's doing its job. Mark drove. Kathy had the kids. I'm home on the couch with my socks on and my sister's copy of Tuesdays with Morrie on my stomach, and I haven't read a page.

Met my oncologist, Dr. B. He looks young enough to be our paperboy, and he drew the whole thing for me on the paper on the exam table. The pathology from the surgery showed the cancer had gotten to one lymph node, so I get the whole works. Four rounds of AC, three weeks apart. AC stands for Adriamycin and Cytoxan. The nurses call the Adriamycin "the red devil," which I could have lived without knowing. Then four rounds of Taxol. Then radiation. He thinks we'll be done by spring. Spring. I wrote "by spring" on the paper so I'd have it in his handwriting.

My hair will go about two weeks after the first treatment. They gave me a list of wig shops. I'm going to go with Kathy on Saturday and try on everything, including the blond ones, because if not now, when.

I get a port put in next week, a little thing under the skin so they don't have to hunt for a vein every time. Then July 8, round one. It's on the calendar. It's real.

We walked the Race for the Cure today. Well, the kids walked, Mark walked, Kathy walked, and I kind of strolled at the back with one arm held still, two and a half weeks after surgery. Kathy signed us up back in May, the day after I told her, before I could say no.

They give the survivors pink T-shirts and everybody else gets white. I didn't want to wear the pink one. I didn't feel like I'd survived anything yet, I felt like I'd barely started. Kathy said that's exactly why, and put it over my head herself.

What got me was the crowd. Thousands of people, and every so often you'd see another pink shirt and the woman in it would look at you and just nod. Old ladies, young ones, a woman pushing a stroller. At the finish people along the sides clapped for the pink shirts. Josh clapped for me the whole last block. I had to get a Kleenex from a stranger.

Lumpectomy was yesterday. Out-patient, home by supper, which seems crazy to me but here I am. It's sore and I'm tired and I'm on the good pills, so forgive the typing. The surgeon says it went just the way she wanted. Now we wait a week or so for the pathology report on the margins and the lymph nodes, and that decides what comes next.

Mark's mom came and made chicken paprikash, which is what she makes for births, deaths and surgeries. The whole house smells like paprika. Josh asked if I have stitches and if he can see them. No.

I have breast cancer.

I typed that five times before I could leave it there.

The doctor called at 4:15 this afternoon while I was making tacos. The biopsy from last week was positive. I wrote down everything she said on the back of an envelope and I can't read half of it now. I turned off the burner and sat on the kitchen floor. Then the kids came in from the bus.

I'm making this page because I just called my sister and my mother-in-law and my best friend and I cannot make that call thirty more times. So this is for our family, and the church, and the ladies at the office, and my old roommate in Spokane, and anybody else who loves us. I'll put everything here. You don't have to call. You can if you want. Just maybe not tonight.

Mark is downstairs with the kids watching a ballgame and I can hear him cheering in a normal voice so they'll think it's a normal night.