You can find makeover shows on nearly every television channel in the lineup, and they’re all pretty much the same. But there’s one I’ll watch week after week: “Overhaulin’.” Forget the scalpels and backhoes. An A-team of car restorers takes a rusty but roadworthy vehicle and transforms it into a classy chassis the owners barely recognize. The appeal of the show is not that people are given a new car to replace the old. Their 1970 Nova is still a 1970 Nova. It’s that they’re given back the classic they treasured and hoped to restore, now revved up and revamped better than they ever imagined. They often need convincing that it’s really the same car.

I needed some convincing myself a few weeks ago. Determined not to let a cancer diagnosis derail my plans to overhaul my own life, I left Denver for Salem to join Willamette University. New town, new job, new doctors — I made so many changes I wasn’t sure this new life was really mine. It took a few choice words from a level-headed friend to remind me that a new life doesn’t necessarily mean a new identity. I’m still a voracious reader and an avid hockey fan. I still have faith and enough of a voice to sing to my nieces over the phone. Hairless and harried, but hopeful, I’m still me. I’m writing a new chapter, not a whole new book, and while the characters may have changed, my character has not.