Though I had prepared myself for whatever the outcome might have been, I had not been certain that the enlargement necessarily predicted the presence of cancer. There were, after all, many other disorders that could cause the liver to enlarge. My haunting emotion that I had not overcome cancer was now parallel with reality; my "balloon of health" was beginning its descent. I focused my eyes on three flower arrangements which were blooming profusely on my nightstand appearing, it seemed, out of nowhere. They formed an odd contrast to the bleak and antiseptic atmosphere, as if to say that life can continue even in such places as hospitals where dim hopes and faltering heartbeats evoke a sense of gloom which permeates entire corridors. I began to barrage my father with questions, many of which he was unable to answer since he had not yet conversed with the doctors to any great degree. He could only tell me that the surgeon opened my mid-section and took a biopsy. Seeing that the cancer was widely distributed throughout my liver, he was not able to operate and therefore sewed up the incision with best wishes. Because the cancer was the same type as I'd previously contracted, the doctors believed that it had never actually disappeared in the first place, and spread without their knowledge to the liver. This might have occurred at an early age, lying dormant, or more probably, spreading slowly until it had touched numerous sites. Leiomyosarcomas, presumably, are considered primarily "older women's cancers" which may spread to the lung; this baffled the doctors to such a degree that they placed me on research after the initial bout, at age thirteen. To find that it had again defied their previous knowledge as to the behavior of the average leiomyosarcoma, recurring in the liver without so much as a trace in the lungs, was considered absolutely mystifying and unique. Despite the uniqueness of the cancer, the fact remained that I was a young woman with a dreaded disease. . . one that had supposedly been "cured" by the lengthy operation and chemotherapy treatment. I reflected how my oncologist (cancer specialist) had reassured the permanence of my cure by saying, "There is more of a chance of your being killed on your drive to the clinic than of having a recurrence of cancer." He was that sure.