I've read stories about women whose breast cancer diagnoses were delayed because they explained away certain symptoms. One woman, an athlete, was told by her husband one day that her nipple looked different from the other. "It's probably just the jog bra I've been wearing all day," she assured him. They both moved on.

Some time later, this woman learned that her different nipple was a sign of breast cancer. And she had it. She just didn't know it. And so her diagnosis came late. Eight years later, this young mother of two small children died from a disease she explained away.

This is normal -- the art of explaining away all the odd messages our bodies give us. Perhaps it's the stigma of whining about every little ache and pain that keeps us from pursuing immediate medical attention. It could be the likelihood that our complaints are pretty normal, so we refrain from rushing to judgment.

I'm practicing this well-established art right now. It's odd for me because I've already had breast cancer, and I am usually ultra-sensitive to every twinge of pain I feel. So when I woke this morning, with a tight and aching feeling in my chest, one would have thought I'd be racing out the door, headed for the nearest emergency room. I considered the fact that perhaps I need to be seen, that a chest X-ray might be in order, but I took no action -- because I explained the feeling away. It went something like this:

It must be the way I slept. I slept in a different bed, with one child and one dog, and I don't think I moved an inch all night.

The feeling gets less intense with time. At this moment, I can only feel something -- and it's very mild -- if I inhale deeply.

If I have the same feeling tomorrow morning, I will pursue it -- no, I won't pursue it just yet because I wont' be sleeping in my own bed for a few more nights. I'll wait until I get back to my own bed and see what happens. Maybe this bed is not good for me.

This goes on and on. For me, I think it happens because I suspect nothing really is wrong with me. Perhaps I am dismissing something serious but mostly, I'm chalking this behavior to progress. Because there was a day when I ran to the dentist for a bump on the roof of my mouth -- it was nothing -- and I cried to get myself a next-day mammogram for some lumpy tissue I was convinced was cancer -- it wasn't -- and now, I am happy to feel more like a normal person. I am happy to have perfected my new art, which incidentally I will abandon in an instant if the discomfort persists.

My husband says he's had this feeling before when getting out of bed. I think I'm going to be OK.

I have a new friend who is a new breast cancer survivor. She is surviving a new diagnosis, a recent lumpectomy, and the moments leading up to another surgery to further investigate the margins surrounding the tumor removed from her breast. She is surviving the first phase of her breast cancer journey. A phase full of uncertainty and fear and panic. A phase so new and so fresh and so raw, her mind is whirling. A phase that has her grasping for any bit of direction she can find as she navigates a terrifying, unfamiliar road.

My friend is a young wife and mother whose worries are consuming her. She e-mailed me today and asked if I ever have moments when I look at my young children and worry that cancer will take me from them while they are young. She asked if I have always been so sure I will be okay. And so I replied with this candid cancer confession.

I didn't know what was coming when I plopped myself down in the waiting room of an Ear, Nose, and Throat clinic yesterday -- which is a good thing. Had I known what doctors would do to me, I may have run the other way. I may have learned to live with the pain I was experiencing each time I swallowed food. But I waited patiently, aware that doctors would "scope" my esophagus, mildly certain the procedure could be uncomfortable, completely unprepared for the full "scope" experience.

I swallowed a pill on Friday night -- not even a whole pill, just a half of one pill -- and it hurt when it went down my throat. I've had the feeling before, a sensation like the pill got stuck, but the discomfort has always gone away within a few hours. This time, it lasted. It hurt to swallow saliva. It hurt to swallow food. It just hurt. So after three days, I took myself to the clinic -- with the subtle worry that cancer was settling in my esophagus.

I know rationally that every ache and pain I experience is not cancer. But I've had cancer. And so I constantly battle a nagging fear lodged deep in my head that reminds me cancer is always a possibility, that cancer is often a shocking outcome of a routine little test for a simple little health concern.

I do not have cancer. I do not have cancer of the throat, voice box, esophagus, or stomach. That's the good news. The scope revealed -- via a tiny camera that traveled through my body -- nothing but healthy tissue. That makes me happy. The test did not make me happy.

I now know the scope is a long, thin tube that enters the body through one nostril. Ouch. It travels into the throat. Ouch. The patient swallows when it reaches the throat to assist in maneuvering it down further. Ouch. The scope then makes its way past the voice box, though the esophagus, and into the stomach. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. The travels are all displayed on a monitor, and I actually got a glimpse of these body parts -- during the split second when I was able to control my gagging, loosen my grip on the arms of the exam chair, and open my clinched eyes. So I saw for myself that everything looks healthy -- just before the tube was pulled right back through all these parts, leaving me with a very sore throat.

Now that I am home and have talked with a few people, I hear that some patients are unconscious for this procedure. They are completely unaware of the horrors of the scope. I got a few sprays to numb my nose and throat and drank a thick cocktail of lidocaine -- but I did not get the luxury of unconsciousness. And in the end that is okay. I got to see what was happening. I got to hear the doctor's revelation that nothing major is wrong. I got to witness the wonder of medical technology. I got to prove to myself that I can handle a little discomfort in exchange for a clean bill of health. And I got to learn that I have a bit of acid reflux. And now I have to squash that nagging fear that reminds me of the literature out there suggesting a link between acid reflux and cancer.

Her diagnosis came at the same time as mine -- in November 2004, just after her husband, John Edwards, and John Kerry lost the presidential election. She received the same treatment as I did -- lumpectomy, chemotherapy, and radiation -- and so I was especially interested in her breast cancer journey as it paralleled my own in many ways. But just after her diagnosis surfaced in the media, Elizabeth Edwards disappeared from the radar -- perhaps like we all do in some way while immersed in the maze of cancer. So I lost track of her. But now -- almost two years later -- Edwards is back from cancer, back in the headlines, and back with a new book, Saving Grace.

Edwards, 57, reveals on the pages of her book the intricacies of her cancer ordeal. She shares that she experienced every side effect possible throughout her treatment. She bruised, bled, developed sores in her mouth, experienced numbness in her hands and feet, lost her hair, felt nauseated, ached in her bones and joints, and suffered yellowed and damaged nails -- and then chemotherapy stopped and she went on to the burning, blistering effects of radiation. Still, she managed to survive. And she thanks those who helped her survive -- for their tenderness, encouragement, humor, tears, and love -- and she writes all about it in her memoir that reveals how she juggled life and marriage and kids and cancer and how she arrived in a new place. A happy place.