You are thrown underwater. The words “You have cancer” become a dark sea that tows you down, down, down, until friends or family or a kind doctor or nurse pulls you up for air. At the surface, you gasp for the stage and grade of it, you gasp for the treatment plan. There is no time to float. Then despair might hit, and you’re back under, to be revived again and again, bit by lung-filled bit, as the days and appointments pass.