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Trusting My Gut

Go with my gut. If there’s anything I’ve learned in the past decade, it’s that.

It’s harder than it sounds. When experts tell you something that conflicts with what your gut is saying, your first inclination is to dismiss your intuition. I mean, they’re experts. Their opinion must be better informed than yours, right?

Wrong. I have learned (the hard way—is there really any other?) that in the big issues of my life, my gut feelings are usually spot-on, and if only I would trust them, I would make a lot fewer mistakes.

Case in point: Schubert vs. Squirrel. When, several Augusts ago, a flying squirrel appeared in my bedroom at 6 AM, I figured that it was a fluke, a misguided squirrel trying to make his way home from a late night out. However, when I began hearing scratching over my head at night, I deduced that we had a more serious problem.

The expert I called out to investigate insisted that I was hearing mice, despite my eyewitness account of a visiting squirrel. He recommended a course of expensive treatment to eliminate our rodent problem. I signed on the dotted line, trusting his judgment.

Let’s fast-forward through the next several months of nocturnal rustling and scuffling in the wall behind my bed, and skip to the call I made to the next expert, who agreed that my problem had to be mice and prescribed yet another course of treatment.

Six weeks after his visit, we heard more scratching, this time in a different wall. Obviously, we had some sort of furry resident in our house. I met the interloper when it scurried across my bed in the middle of the night. Turning on the light to investigate, I found myself looking at another flying squirrel.

With prior experience in sending a squirrel packing, not only were Scott and I able to corral him safely to the window for his exit, we also managed to cut our previous best squirrel removal time in half. When, two nights later, a third squirrel made its appearance on the curtain rod next to my bed, I decided to seek help from a new expert.

This one immediately recognized the problem and correctly diagnosed our flying squirrel infestation. With proper baiting and trapping, eight (8!) flying squirrels were relocated far enough away that they wouldn’t find their way back, and the hole through which they’d been entering our soffit was closed.

Interestingly enough, the flying squirrel issue came to a head while I was in my early rounds of chemo. Was it a coincidence? I think not—because the squirrel problem so clearly paralleled the lumps under my arm that had worried me for three years.

When the lumps first appeared, I asked my doctors if they were anything to be concerned about. Diagnostic imaging suggested that they were benign, yet at every subsequent exam, I found myself asking my surgeon to take another look.

I don’t blame my doctors for failing to immediately diagnose my recurrence. I understand their reluctance to recommend an invasive procedure like a biopsy when all signs pointed to the lumps being nothing more than necrotized fat, whatever that is.

What bothers me is that I knew in my gut that it wasn’t normal to have a line of pea-sized lumps from my mastectomy scar to my armpit, yet I disregarded my own judgment based on the advice of the medical experts. I didn’t trust what I knew to be true.

That’s a mistake that I’m no longer willing to make. Nowadays, when my gut speaks, I listen. I obey my instinct, even when it tells me to do something crazy, like adding personal trainer certification to my already crowded resume.

I know better than to argue when that still, small voice within prompts me to publish a memoir about my most painful personal failure, pushing me to go public with my grief, despite my natural preference for the safety of suffering in silence.

I don’t know exactly how to market my book to ensure that it gets into the hands of people who need it, or if I’ll sell enough copies to break even on my investment, but aside from the standard jitters that accompany taking risks, I’m not worried. I know I’m doing the right thing.

My gut always leads me where I need to go, if I’m brave enough to follow it.

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