The people I remembered who had it - well, they were dead.ДЄnd then came the evening where I walked into a cancer support group meeting. Would the tumour be reduced, be gone, be back, be bigger?ДЄnd at the end of all this, would the cancer just come back and get me in the end anyway?ДЄnd then I find the diary entry that makes me write this cancer story one more time.ДЄll along, deep down, I thought there was no escaping cancer. There were the diary entries written before a scan. It was, my 45-year-old self realises now, denial.

If I was still walking into the office every day, then, I told myself, I was still me. I wanted to keep my identity, I wanted to be more than just a cancer patient. In hindsight, I didnвЂ™t want to admit to people - to myself - that the cancer had вЂgotвЂ™ me. I scream at the diary now, to myself 20 years older and wiser - why didnвЂ™t you just stop? For a little while? Let your body rest? I was a young reporter in Australia at the Sydney Morning Herald and as my chemo continued, the poison building month after month, my body just couldnвЂ™t keep up. My confidence and my self-esteem were in tatters. Those diaries were outpourings of grief for the family I feared IвЂ™d never have. I was going through menopause with no way of knowing if it was permanent or temporary. The treatment meant my periods had stopped. I didnвЂ™t recognise the person looking back at me in the mirror, she looked so gaunt, skeletal. Horrendously so from the cocktail of four chemotherapy drugs pumped into my veins every two weeks for six long months. I would write in the dead of night gripped by insomnia and fear. I wrote about my cancer experience many times in those early years, so much so that old college friends would email me, as only the Irish can, to ask if I was still вЂflogging that old storyвЂ™.Д«ut in recent weeks, as talk of the Twin Towers 20th anniversary grew louder and louder, on radio shows, in newspaper articles, I pulled out my old diaries from those months of chemotherapy and radiation.

Ground zero for life