There are few things in the world I love more than pancakes. Stuffed, topped, slathered, I like it all. Although chocolate chip reigns as my current favorite. Making pancakes is almost as much fun as eating them, watching a liquid turn to a solid circle of deliciousness. That moment when you press the pancake against the griddle with the spatula and it cracks and sizeles is indescribable.

You see, making pancakes is poetic in a sense. Life swats it’s spatuala and pushes us against its hot griddle where we fizzle and cook through. Sometimes we press pancakes too hard and they burn a little. Or a lot.

On a particularly fine day in July I was pressed into my own griddle by my arch nemesis, cancer. It broke into my home, muddied the freshly steamed carpets, and slapped me on my own griddle. As if frying me wasn’t enough, he took the other three breakfast lovers that I call my family and sizzled them too. It could of been any one of us who go burned by cancer, but it was my dad who was especially blackened. Let me tell you, cancer sucks at making pancakes. He periodically removes us from the heat yet always returns to show us who’s boss.

So this is my story with cancer, told in the kitchen.