why this title?

Two days before Thanksgiving, 2012, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. From the time I noticed the lump, I had a bad feeling about it. I was in great health and had felt lucky to be suffering no chronic illness at age 65. My weight was under control. My blood pressure was perfect. I felt great.

But this lump didn't feel right. When a mammogram and ultrasound showed not only the lump but a swollen lymph gland nearby, the bad feeling got worse. By the time the biopsy was done, I was fully expecting to find I had cancer. It felt weird to go in to get the results and just know what the news would be. When the nurses went to get the doctor, I knew what he would say.

While I waited to get the official results, my thoughts were largely that I'd been lucky all my life. I told myself it was only fair that some bad luck come my way. I hoped that I would handle this bad luck with grace and courage and that I would never ask, "Why me?" (The answer would have to be, "Why not me?" since no one deserves breast cancer.)

After changing careers at mid-life and becoming an attorney working in criminal defense, I began to appreciate just how lucky I was. Not a single one of my clients had ever been lucky. They had horrible unbringings, impoverished childhoods, and came from families fractured and damaged in ways unimaginable to me. I wished my parents were still alive so I could tell them over and over again what great parents they had been. Getting to know just a little about my clients made me realize that I had come from a very privileged background.It made me think that I could not take credit for any accomplishments I'd had. I wasn't responsible. It was my privileged background.

Like most Americans, I had believed that being privileged meant coming from a family with a lot of money. I realized that I was truly privileged, not because of money (We were barely lower middle class.), but because I had simply wonderful parents. I was privileged because I had two parents who were totally devoted to me and my siblings. They went to work every day, they paid their bills on time, they demonstrated appreciation for education (though neither had gone to college and Daddy had stopped school after 8th grade), they were honest, they were sober. They were great parents. I came from a privileged background. How lucky I was.

But, back to the topic at hand -- Why this blog is titled "It's not Patrick." It was the MRI. I'd had MRI's before, but I had a new experience this time. During one of the longer scans (during which the machine makes loud, rhymthic sounds), I kept hearing, over and over, the phrase "it's not Patrick, it's not Patrick, it's not Patrick." As soon as I got out, I told the technician and Chris about what my imagination had made of the sounds. We all laughed out loud. I'm still smiling at the memory and wondering if anyone else hears the same phrase in that MRI machine.