This week, 20 years ago, people were praying and meditating and pulling for me as I prepared for labor, then gave birth to my first child, a sweet boy who has grown into a sweet young man I couldn’t be prouder of.

Twenty years he’s been alive. Two decades I’ve been a mother.

And now people are praying and meditating and pulling for me again, this time as I prepare to have a uterine biopsy, four days before my 20th anniversary of giving birth.

If she had to guess, my gynecologist, the woman who delivered my third child 11 years ago, would say the one-inch mass she saw via Ultrasound is a benign polyp; I have a polyp in my cervix, which is a good indicator that what is inside the uterus is a polyp, too.

Still, she can’t be sure, especially since my mother had uterine cancer when she was 49, and my father died of colon cancer when he was 57, and my grandfather died of lung cancer, and my sister had pre-cancerous cells in her cervix when she was in her 20s.

And so she has to go in with something Google describes as a curette, take a few snips and send them off to the laboratory.

I’ve asked all the questions I could ask, done all the mental preparing I can do, as I prepare for this new development.

I’ve gathered in a surprisingly wide community of support, to include a Buddhist scholar, who is going to chant for me at the exact time of my procedure. Another friend will play African drums. One of my sisters is setting her alarm to pray.

I’ve also spoken with my two older childen, who have noticed that I’m suddenly going to the doctor a lot. I told them only as much as I thought they needed to know as without scaring them, I hope. They patted me on the back, even as I patted them on theirs, even as my 16-year-old daughter asked three times, “So the doctor is hopeful, right?”

I feel the love, support and hope all around me. I also can’t help but see the irony.

Born into a family with immature and narcissistic parents, I never learned that I was of value until I became a mother myself.

In learning how to care for my three children, I learned to care for myself.

And now, the vessel that carried the four of us to life is called into the glare of dread.

I am fully aware of the many possibilities that will present themselves after the biopsy and the subsequent laboratory analysis, which won’t come back until the second week of October.

These possibilities run the gamut — from nothing to a hysterectomy. A hysterectomy is how they fixed my mother’s cancer, which never showed itself again in the remaining 20 years of her life.

So maybe the worst case scenario is that I have to have all my female organs removed.

And poof.

The cancer, should there be any, will be gone.

As will the origins of my saving grace.

It’s just ironic timing, that’s all.

- Debra-Lynn