...So you can imagine my surprise, bewilderment and confusion when after 26 years of looking to that bold, fierce symbol for any novelty fortune-telling needs my horoscope indicates that my birthday now falls between August 23 and September 22.
Through six months of self-diagnosis, internet "research," useless doctor visits and a skin tone that quickly faded from healthy to ghost-like, cancer never for a second entered my consciousness. Not once. Even as I sat in the hematology lab telling the 85th intern to ask that I DID NOT remember experiencing any fevers recently I was still convinced it was just pneumonia.
The 95% certainty of my doctor that it was Hodgkin's got through to me the next morning. So after a brief three minutes of being scared out of my mind I started fighting cancer.
Because my birthday is July 30.
The idea to post "The Cancer Dancer" came to me not long after receiving that life-altering information. (Catchy title, inspiring story...read: book and movie deals.) I had immediately considered the implications to my dance career: as an artist, an athlete and as an adult who has to make money. My crazy dance life will be back soon, and this will be the chronicle of how it returns.
