It feels familiar. The sense of panic, the sense of dread, the need for information and action where none is available.

Last year I was diagnosed with breast cancer and this is how it felt. Hurry up, get this test, do this, now wait for a few months while we schedule your surgery. Here is all the information we have for you … now here is the longer list of information we do not have. Even now, almost a year after they removed the cancer from my body (along with my breast) it nags at me still. What’s next? Did it work? How will we know?

My husband is in Europe. He has been there since November. When we planned his sabbatical we did not know about the cancer in my body. Even once we knew, we didn’t really know what it meant. We didn’t know that the fear, the anxiety, the dread does not leave with the cancer. It did not leave me. It did not leave my children.

They say that there are a lot of conditions, like depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, maybe even cancer, that are both nature and nurture. If you have the right gene, the condition lies dormant in your body until the right environmental trigger sets it off. This is what my panic feels like. The cancer has left a trail of panic waiting to be triggered. I don’t think I am alone in this. I think most of us, or maybe all of us, carry this dormant panic. From past illness, from past abuse, from living.

Corona, Covid 19, whatever – it is triggering the panic lying not-so-dormant in my body. Will my husband make it home? Will he have the virus? Will I get the virus? Will my children, my neighbors, my parents … There is so much to do. There is nothing to do.

My dormant panic feels deeper than my cancer. Last night as I stayed up late trying to talk to the airlines, trying to get my husband out of Europe, I thought of my grandparents and what it must have felt like to them trying to get their parents and relatives out of Europe in the 1930s. I know this virus is not Nazi Germany. I know that in a worst case scenario my husband will be stuck in a lovely town in the south of France for an extra month. But my panic does not know this. They say that trauma can be passed down genetically through the generations. My panic has been triggered and it is yelling at me, “Hurry! Wait! Do something!”

I used to say that I was one personal tragedy away from living in a house filled with dolls or stuffed animals. We were going to go to Graceland for spring break. I love to view other people’s collections. I like to see how others attempt to keep the panic at bay. The trip is almost surely canceled.