The stares were annoying, but I knew they didn’t mean any harm. So, every morning, smiling at them became part of my routine, too.

I kept wanting to go back on the stage and do it again since I had so much fun and felt so accomplished. It seemed that I had regained a lot of the confidence that I knew I had years before when I performed onstage all the time.

Before I knew it, I was racing across the highway. For the first time in my life, I didn’t know what to think.

When the doctors came in a little while later saying they thought they knew my diagnosis, I was afraid to know.