An accounting is made of an illness during the first month of the new year. The disease (chronic lymphocytic leukemia) had progressed over a period of several years; treatments had recently started, and the prognosis was unpredictable. Keeping a daily journal was a way of coping with the illness and the uncertainty (now more evident than usual) of personal existence. The storyline of one’s life, in other words, had changed, and a new understanding was in the making. The accounting over 1 month’s time is a documentation of and a witnessing to the creation of a life. Two photographs, past and present, accompany the journal entries.
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