Reasons Why I Did Not Cry During "The Fault in Our Stars"

1. I had read the book right before I saw the movie.

2. I had an esophageal spasm throughout the movie.

3. My tear ducts didn't want to.

4. The actor who played Isaac kept moving his eye that was suppose to be made of glass.

5. I had spent the entire afternoon crying because my esophageal manometry went horribly wrong.

Before the manometry I told the endoscopy doctor that I have already been diagnosed with Achalasia and he didn't understand why this test was being repeated. During the test he couldn't get the sensor probe down into my lower esophageal sphincter. The motility in my esophagus is so poor that the test had to be stopped. I gagged up all of the water I had drank all over myself and my doctors. It was horrifying and I couldn't stop myself from sobbing all of the way home and for hours after that.

There's a really great piece of dialogue said by Augustus Waters from the book on page 145, he says to Hazel, "What am I at war with? My cancer. And what is my cancer? My cancer is me. The tumors are made of me. They're made of me as surely as my brain and my heart are made of me."

What am I at war with?

My esophagus.

It's made of me. It's part of me. My brain tells it to function like an esophagus but it can't. I feel it trying. I feel every muscle, every nerve, every cell trying to function the way it is meant to function. But all my esophagus can do is close up on me and reject the food and water I try to feed my body.

I know what I have is not cancer. And I hope I never have to experience cancer. And maybe it's not fair to compare Achalasia to cancer.

But this is my pain and it is real.

And I am scared.