Take Me or Heal Me: An Ultimatum From a Weary Heart

My name is Rinad Bsharat and I should be dead by now. In March 2005, I was told I had three months to live. Yet it is 2021, and I am still here.

Faced with a cancer diagnosis at twenty-three, Rinad Bsharat is sure it will be a footnote in her life's journey. As a young twenty-something with high ambitions, she is invincible. Convinced the disease will be a temporary distraction, she follows her dreams and starts law school as scheduled. The disease, however, has other plans.

Nicknamed "Bisseh" or "cat" as a child by her father, Rinad has expended her nine lives in a battle against Hodgkin's Lymphoma after doctors claimed six months of chemotherapy would cure this disease. Her journey has lasted eighteen years so far, and traversed nine different treatment protocols-each one threatening her life in a different way.

Throughout her treatments, Rinad struggles with her identity and her faith as she searches to find love and the purpose of her life. With each diagnosis and subsequent remission, Rinad learns to live each of Bisseh's nine lives with, and in spite of, the disease.

With every relapse, she attempts to live the chic dating life of a successful young attorney-albeit sometimes in very outrageous wigs. She tries various supposed "cures," from traditional Western medicine to New Age methods in rural Mexico.

During these treatment protocols, she maintains her career as a successful attorney working in the federal government, and then she goes on to build a second career in real estate.

Rinad is told many times to prepare for death, but each time she beats the odds. She allows herself to ask-and explore-many difficult questions that challenge her beliefs in herself and her faith. With each remission, she is reborn stronger and comes to see this realization as a different type of cure than she initially sought, finding peace in the healing of her heart from a sense of purpose and everlasting love.