That's how I'd catalog this page, anyway. I'm Peg Satterwhite. I've been the librarian at a middle school in Duluth, Minnesota, for twenty-two years, and in January 1997 I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I'm 52 now, and as of this month I've been cancer-free for two and a half years. The title is a library joke: when your book is due, you can renew it and keep it a while longer. That's how I feel about my life.

I've put my story on cards, the way I think. Read them in order or pull out the one you need. I've also put together a reading shelf of the books that helped me.

I'm not a doctor. Everyone's cancer is different. Please take your questions to your own medical team.

I didn't feel a thing. It was a routine mammogram, the kind I almost canceled because it was the week of the book fair. The radiologist wanted more pictures, then a biopsy, and the phone call came on a Thursday afternoon in January while I was shelving a cart of returns.

So here's my one piece of preaching for the whole page: talk to your doctor about mammograms and don't skip them. The American Cancer Society says women 40 and over should have one every year. Mine found a lump too small to feel, and I'm sure that's a large part of why I'm here writing this.

I went back to school in September 1997 in a short gray wig the kids nicknamed "the Dewey," because it was so well organized.

• A notebook. I'm a librarian. I wrote down every question, every answer and every name. My husband Arne came to every appointment and took his own notes, and afterward we compared.
• A Reach to Recovery volunteer. The American Cancer Society sent a woman who'd had breast cancer eleven years before to visit me after surgery. She sat on my hospital bed and showed me she was fine. I have never forgotten her.
• Look Good...Feel Better. A free class where volunteers teach women in treatment about makeup, wigs and scarves. It sounds silly. It isn't. I laughed for the first time in weeks.
• My support group, which still meets the first Monday of the month at the hospital. We started with eleven women and now there are twenty-six of us.
• My students. A seventh grader made me a bookmark every week I was out. I have sixteen of them.

• Take a breath. You usually have time to learn and ask questions before deciding anything. Ask your doctor how much time.
• It's all right to get a second opinion. Good doctors expect it.
• Bring someone to your appointments.
• Be careful what you read, online especially. Some of it is old, some of it is wrong, and none of it is about you specifically. Take it to your doctor.
• Groups that helped me find information and people: the American Cancer Society, Y-ME National Breast Cancer Organization, the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, and the National Cancer Institute's Cancer Information Service. All of them have free booklets.
• And write to me if you'd like. I remember how that first week felt.

My hair came back curly, which nobody warned me about, and gray, which I had been hiding for years anyway. I see my oncologist every six months and have a mammogram every year, and I hold my breath every time until the results come. That part doesn't go away. But I walked in my first Race for the Cure last fall with Arne and our daughter Kirsten, and this spring I became a Reach to Recovery volunteer myself. Last month I sat on a hospital bed and showed a frightened young mother that I'm fine.

The book is due someday for all of us. I've renewed mine. I intend to keep renewing it.