Feel free to call me Dorothy—you know, the girl in the Wizard of Oz who was consumed by a tornado and deposited in an alien land with no anchor but her dog Toto.

Chaos consumes me. As I sit typing this, my desk is littered with a full water bottle, a pill box, bills, scissors, a calendar, a mouse, some essential oils, pens, a Kleenex box, an empty water bottle, a stack of who-knows-what-they-are papers (actually, three stacks), some stuffed animals, an eyeglasses holder, a keyboard duster, some jewelry—I can’t even continue to list all the items.

As a third-year medical student, I’m used to being tired and stressed, and like many of us in training, I tend to neglect my own health. “It’s probably nothing,” I told myself. “I’m overthinking it. Illness anxiety disorder.”

But I’d always been unusually sensitive to cold. Since childhood, my hands and feet would freeze, turning pale, numb, sometimes bluish. I thought it was just a quirky trait. Then I learned about Raynaud’s phenomenon in class, and my classmates and I joked: “You totally have that.”

I’ve been a “lady in waiting” more than once. A traditional “lady in waiting” attends to royalty—which sounds like a pretty cushy job. But when you’re a lady waiting for the results of a biopsy, the task is a royal pain. Waiting for the phone to ring when you’re younger often means getting asked out on a date. Then years later, you find yourself waiting for a call from your doctor, to set a follow-up appointment to discuss your biopsy results. As anyone can attest, this waiting period can be a true test of resilience.

I have had four breast biopsies. The procedures did not hurt since they occurred when I was in a twilight sleep. What caused me pain, however, was waiting for the results.

My imagination would run wild. Would I need a single or double mastectomy? Would I have implants or just live my life with a flat chest as I did through most of my teenage years? Would the cancer be stage 4 and have spread to lymph nodes? How much time would I have left to create memories with my beloved children?