I rolled back the images. Looked again. There it was. A new tumor, large, filling my right middle lobe. It looked, oddly, like a full moon having almost cleared the horizon. Going back to the old images, I could make out the faintest trace of it, a ghostly harbinger now brought fully into the world. I was neither angry nor scared. It simply was. It was a fact about the world, like the distance from the sun to the Earth.

I was diagnosed with breast cancer a few years ago, but so early that I knew it wasn’t a death sentence. Until we get a cure for cancer, early detection is our best hope.

When I was an idiot high school student, as opposed to being an idiot adult, I used to drive very fast.

Right after 9/11, Kenny and I went to perform for the troops in Pakistan and Uzbekistan. As we were flying in, an electronic voice went off: “Warning: missile launch! Warning: missile launch!” The Taliban had fired a rocket at us. I was waiting to see the back of the plane blow up, but it didn’t and we landed.

In my 20s I was in a show called The Unauthorised Autobiography of Samantha Brown. The actor who played my dad messed up his lines and it made me laugh so hard that I ended up peeing my pants.

I’ve never really had a horrible job – I liked working at restaurants and being a nanny when I wasn’t acting.

Crashing in an aeroplane into an ocean at night.

Your lowest moment is temporary.

Someone to clean my apartment.

Being alive on Earth is challenging and I like to believe that whatever happens after is filled with peace and ease.