Almost five years later, the memory is still as vivid as if it were happening now as I tell you that while showering, I discovered a lump in my breast. My hand stopped, my breath caught, and my stomach clenched in terror. Instinctively, I knew I was in trouble. After mammogram, ultrasound, biopsy and the first of three surgeries, the diagnosis of breast cancer was not the most optimistic one. My lobular breast cancer had spread beyond the breast into lymph nodes -- and perhaps elsewhere not yet clearly detected.

I would spend the next four years peering over my shoulder, wondering if the shadow of death would visit me with another cancer diagnosis, and if so, where would it settle in this time. If I ate pizza topped with jalapenos for that extra kick of flavor and got a stomach ache, I wondered -- had cancer spread to my liver? If I spent a day met with seemingly endless frustrations and annoyances and got a headache -- had the cancer spread to my brain?

While there is nothing rational about these leaps to a cancer conclusion based on evidence suggesting I suffered from logically explainable modern life maladies that antacid or aspirin might easily cure, for the newly-diagnosed surviving breast cancer, it is not uncommon for the mind to immediately race to an impending cancer-based doom for every day aches and pains. I am here to tell you that for the first few years it will be quite normal to have totally unreasonable fears.

Not willing to subject myself to this screeching fingernails on the blackboard fear without finding something to muffle the sound, I began creating personal rituals that suggested hope and affirmed life. With each one I was stating the value of my life and staking my claim to my future. For each woman, the personal rituals will be different. Here are a few I created that might give you some ideas for your own:

The doctor tells you that you have cancer. Most likely, one of the first things you want to know is how good -- or bad -- your chances are for surviving the cancer. If you do not ask, you will be told when the combination of recommended treatments are discussed with you. It's all about percentages. But what do percentages really mean for you personally? Not much. Cancer is a complex disease, with an equally complex outcome. At this point, you have two choices. You can give up -- feeling like cancer is a death sentence -- or you can decide to believe that your chances are as good as the best predicted percentages ever given to a cancer patient. I really like Deepak Chopra's example of statistics when he compared them to the weather. "If the average temperature in New York City for the year is 54 degrees Fahrenheit, that does not inform me what the temperature is just now or today. Similarly if you are a citizen of Bangladesh and the average income of a Bangladeshi happens to be $65 per household per year, that does not tell me what your personal income is if you happen to be a Bangladeshi."