Support for the Radio West podcast comes from Harmon's Grocery, highlighting the flavors of fall

with pumpkin spice in everything from bakery treats to favorite drinks. All things pumpkin spice are

available at local Harmon's stores. Harman's Grocery.com. When she was 17, Caroline Crampton was diagnosed with blood cancer.

She went through the treatment. It receded, then returned, and then receded for good.

She was declared cured at 22.

No more annual checkups or scans or medications.

They said she was cancer-free, but she was not free.

The experience left her with an enduring fear that something was still or always wrong with her.

She looked for signs and developed rituals like this one.

She performed at work.

Who hasn't had a job that they find overwhelming or boring or difficult

and snuck off to the bathroom every so often when they don't actually need to go

just in order

to get a few minutes peace or a break. And that for me transformed into this anxiety ritual. Every few days

at the worst times, every day, I would at some point think I could feel something in my neck where I'd had a cancerous humour before.

It would itch with this powerful urge to check it, and I would need to go off and check it before I could think about anything else.

The rhythms of this ritual are deeply ingrained.

Lean forward closer to the mirror, bracing hips against the sink.

Old bruises accepting the hard angles.

One hand to pull my shirt away from my left collarbone,

the other to poke and prod the shadow I saw there.

Always have to be the same bathroom, same mirror, and I had to poke it and poke it

...