Translate

Sunday, November 30, 2014

Post-traumatic Newlywed Syndrome...

My man moved in on Halloween 2013, and we had Thanksgiving, our wedding, a honeymoon, my birthday, and Christmas, then New Year's, 2014, and the spring semester started, with both of us teaching, and then: screeching brakes. At the end of January, the plans we had to kick back and relax after the fun whirlwind were swept up into another whirlwind, a scary one, one with mortal coils, spirals of fear and worry. Cancer is confusion, and irony, and self-blame, and vulnerability. It is also the strangest gift, one that keeps on giving: the most ordinary days and events become rewards and blessings, grace sprinkled on generously, with light and warmth, and unmitigated joy.

The past few weeks, at last post-treatment, have been filled with a flurry of delayed newlywed gratification. We have moved furniture, and spackled, and shopped for paint, and painted, and today, we went to IKEA. This sounds like trite, consumeristic nonsense. But for the past months, though I pushed myself to do many, many things that had to be done in spite of the hideous treatments, I could not rally the physical or psychological energy to go up to IKEA and make my home better suited for three of us, no matter how often I thought of it, gazing longingly at the catalog and website.

Today, we drove there, roamed around the maze of color and texture, laughed about ourselves and people there, ate gravlax, hoisted flat-pack, braved the snail checkout, and put it all in the car. Today, I stopped dozens of times to feel the rush of lucky roll over me because I don't think it would ever have been possible to enjoy the divine ordinary of a trip to IKEA if I hadn't gotten cancer. Today, ambling through with dear husband, planning rooms to comfortably hold us all, making a home, making a life, just like normal newlyweds, was a hard earned gift.

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Joy to the world, all the boys and girls...

My slightly scatty ability to self-analyze seems to detect a liminal shift in my stage of cancer recovery. I'm rapidly approaching delirious joy, though I will try to keep the delirious part dialed down. It may be some kind of post-chemical/radiated response of my body and brain, but honestly: colors are brighter, music and words more moving, air smells amazing, cooking and eating bring pure pleasure, and everyone is beautiful. Not just in their own way; really beautiful. Cranky people who formerly drove me nuts are simply not, even when they are selfish and neurotic; I figure they need a smile even more than most. If my son has dropped to a B+ in English, so be it - this fall, he learned to be a distance runner who constantly improved his time, and now he is busy living his dream of being in a pit orchestra for a musical; he can pull up his grade later. But most of all, he is beautiful: a fully formed human who came to earth via me, and light shines out of him. My husband is beautiful, heart and soul; light shines from him, too, and music. My friends and family are better than any riches on earth, and they are beautiful, light shining from them all, lighting my way through this adventure, this life.

My gratitude for life is off the charts, and this joy, should it prove sustainable, may be more powerful than the Tamoxifen, could be the secret to long term cancer survival, learned late in life, but better late than never.

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Dubious Gift

Dear Left Breast,

Don't think that I blame you, or that you have been singled out and punished. I know you have been squashed in countless mammos, ultrasounded, and pierced for a biopsy. You've been surgically sliced and diced, had a wire jabbed into you, as well as an implanted metal marker. You've been stitched and attached to drains. You've been flushed with toxic chemicals, squashed some more, then trussed up into plastic and velcro and radiated by the VARIAN True Beam until you resemble a brown coconut, blistered and spotted. All this is true. But we have been in this together, all for the best and we can hope it will be the last of it, after today's scans. This body has sometimes felt like a battlefield, with skirmishes breaking out: shin, shoulder, armpit, scalp, tummy, tongue - but peace will come.

Eventually, I'm told, you will go back to resembling Right Breast again, smoother and pinker, and less mottled. You will be poked and prodded less frequently. We shall both forget the indignities of illness, the receptionists who called us "Hon" and only remember the compassion, humor, and sweetness of the professionals who helped heal us. We will think of all the loving family and friends who gave us prayers, smiles, cards, gifts, and laughs, especially the laughs. We will remember the colleagues and students who showed their kindness in myriad ways.

We will never again go sunbathing topless in the South of France, but we probably wouldn't have anyway, at this age, even without the dubious gift of a life adventure like breast cancer. We will instead cherish every sunrise and sunset over the lake and river and sea, fully clothed, and grateful.

Love, me.

Saturday, September 6, 2014

Step Three

If I've been quiet here, it is because I'm just beginning to raise my head up out of the foxhole. Okay, not a great metaphor, because there has been no hiding from enemy fire. A better metaphor would be getting off a merry-go-round, those metal ones ubiquitous in playgrounds before people worried so much about children's ability to play safely. Kids would load on, someone would spin it by holding the bar and running fast right next to it, and then jump on. The world would blur by if you looked out, familiar but lacking essential detail. Gradually, it would slow down, and you would climb off, reeling and tipsy, centrifugally altered, but still in the same place.

Going through two surgeries and six rounds of chemo in seven months required my hanging on through a swirl, looking out at a sometimes blurred world going by, dizzy, often nauseated and disoriented, precisely at a time when thinking clearly would probably be a good idea.  Then the chemo ends, things stop swirling so fast, and smelling weird, and the hair starts growing back, altered, but still on my head.

So now that I'm done swirling, landed in the same place, I have possibly too much time to reflect on what the hell just happened. Getting from one appointment to the next was in many ways easier. I used to love Jed Bartlet in West Wing when he'd say to staff, "What's next?" but I console myself now that I don't have to answer anything except "radiation," the Step Three after surgery and chemo.

Radiation offers those bizarre moments unique to breast cancer treatment.  I am having a new form of super high-tech radiation, with a Star Trek-like machine, and in case you think I'm exaggerating, it is called the VARIAN TrueBeam High Energy Linear Accelerator (THELA). I have a team of three highly trained technicians who make this thing work with admirable precision, including playing jazz on Pandora while I'm on the table. Mandy is an artist of alignment, and her two handsome assistants tug and shove me to her requests like "left hip 3cm right" with fervent devotion.

But the first day was slightly intimidating, and I walked into the vast room with the plutonium-powered DeLorean THELA machine with no idea what happens next. I looked up at a monitor next to the machine and saw large photos, including a side angle shot of my left breast, trussed up in the plastic and velcro thing they fitted me with for these treatments. My face must have done something because Mandy said consolingly, "That is just so we know we have the right treatment location. Probably not what you expected to see this early in the morning."  I answered, "Well, as long as you don't leak it on the internet with Jennifer Lawrence's naked photos..."  There was a second of silence, and then three loud guffaws. From that moment, I figured it would be fine.


Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Cancer cures wrinkles...

One of the great things about cancer treatment is that it refocuses priorities, at least for the patient. Rather than worrying about the long-term effects of a bad haircut, I worry about the long term.

Having lost most of my hair, including eyelashes, eyebrows, and other bits, I am freed up to worry about having lost some cognitive function, like finishing sentences.

When I look in the mirror at my fuzzy head and puzzle over what look is coming next, I realize no one ever knows what is coming next. I should already know this, given my life history, but clearly I need big, heavy hammer reminders. Nothing subtle.

Last week, while arranging a consult with a dermatologist because of the former melanoma on my leg, my oncologist joked that it could take awhile to get an appointment for cancer follow up, but if I wanted Botox, they'd see me fast. So this got me thinking about the wrinkles and creases meandering around my face as I slide down the slope to sixty...maybe that is the look that is coming next?

Absolutely not. All earned, all me. After enduring a multitude of things shot into my body for the past six months, nothing unnecessary will be, well, necessary. Cancer has eliminated wrinkles from my worries. Both my wrinkles, and yours. Cured.




Thursday, July 24, 2014

Not lol. Loll.

I don't lol. I don't mean laugh out loud - if you know me, you know I do that raucously. I mean I don't write "lol" to signify I am laughing out loud. I am nearly 57 and it isn't becoming. I would have cringed had my mother said "far out" as an exclamation in my youth, and no doubt Love Child would cringe at my writing "lol" in social media or anywhere else. (I do write WTF in text messages, but he doesn't usually read my texts, so he is spared embarrassment.)

In any case, I do not lol, but I do loll, as in around. As in lollygag. Summer increases my need to loll, particularly in the sun, and Vermont has only intensified the need this summer, because the air smells so darn good, like green, like cool water. 

Right now, I'm staying in a lovely house with a screened porch, complete with a sun-loving kitten who shows absolutely no guilt about lollygagging. He works hard and fast in the morning, knocking things off the shelves, chewing on my computer, spinning a pen across the floor, licking my breakfast, then curls up in the sun by me and yawns. He is an excellent teacher; now I work hard and fast in the mornings, too, and when the sun starts leaning in through the screens, I curl up and yawn. 

Chemo has given me a very particular justification for lolling. When I feel horrid, I need to focus on something to both remember and look forward to, and on the scale of great things to remember and look forward to, lolling in the sun in Vermont ranks in the nosebleed level of the range, way up there. I'm grateful for my teacher. 





Thursday, July 17, 2014

If I were you, I wouldn't read much further...

Really, this is just going to be more chemo grumbling; useless venting.

I seem to have reached the point of fed-up a bit short of the point of finished. My patience is worn not only thin, but off, like the soles of my favorite Merrells. I've worn through two pairs so far, replacing them when the soles had turned to holes, but for this, I have no idea where to go for replacement.

I'd like to stop complaining and catastrophizing, and I'd like my real life back, the one with normal chaos and annoyances, like dog hair and the service light on in the car. I'm weary beyond reckoning of being bone tired, feverish, weak, nauseated, brain-addled, and in pain.

I'd like to once again be a nice person to live with: one who is cheerful, helpful, generous, positive, and cooks good things, instead of someone who runs from the smell of coffee or lettuce (chemo and lettuce: very VERY bad) Who wants to live with a retching wretch? Certainly not me.

So, yes, I understand that I have to do this one more, one last time. July 31. But I don't have to like it.




Sunday, June 22, 2014

Restoration Software...

Waves lap softly over the shale beach. My shoulders soften back down to where they should be, lower than my ears, which can hear the voices of the fishermen in the small boat, softened by the distance. Birdsong is a soft murmur from the huge trees on shore.

Nothing restores me like staring at water, and I gaze across it, confirming my refusal to let the chemo schedule cancel our journey to this house perched on Lake Champlain, booked before therapy began. Basking here in the reflected shimmer of the water is a powerful form of therapy.

My respect for the chemicals pumped into me is endless, as well as for the brilliance of the scientists who created this regime which allows so many women to survive, when years ago, they wouldn't. When I feel outright dreadful, and even when that subsides and I simply feel off, strangely riddled, I still cheer the toxins doing their work that is saving me.

But I deeply respect other cures, too, and this vista, the glory of this sleek lake, framed in the distance by hazy mountains, helps me breathe and let go, remember that I'm more than a damaged body. Everything in nature has its own cycle of damage and renewal, including me.

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Spoiler Alert: The Bletchley Circle, Season 2 - Reborn or resumed?

As an unashamed lover of British telly, I am hooked on several BBC series; luckily, I managed to convert dear husband to fandom, too. Love Child notes, eyes rolling, how predictably dull we are, hunkered in of an evening, with our "Midsomer Murder" marathons, and "Foyle's War" post-show analysis. We don't do sports; this is our sport.

Last night was practically our Super Bowl: two episodes, back to back, of new season two of The Bletchley Circle, a visually powerful, factually based drama about four women who were part of the famous code-breaking and deciphering team that is credited with shortening World War II, saving countless lives. Much of the show is about how these women fared after, in post-war London, unable to tell anyone what they'd done because of the Official Secrets Act, now in ordinary jobs or married, with children and husbands who don't know Mum was a war hero.

In last night's episode, Alice is arrested for murdering her former lover, also a Bletchley veteran, and we find out she is deliberately covering for her long lost daughter, whom she believes committed the murder. Alice refuses to fight the charge and is sentenced to hang. As her former Bletchley colleagues attempt to solve the murder, the prison prepares to carry out the sentence. In a bleak scene, she is weighed, her height is taken, and then, in a tight close up, a tape measure goes loosely around her neck; a voice intones: "fourteen inches." We see just her face; we can't - or won't - imagine what this feels like, having your neck measured for a noose.

In the end (I promised spoilers!) she is acquitted and walks out of the prison (though not into sunshine, this being London) completely free.

I could not stop thinking about that scene, wondering how it would feel. Would she now make her life completely different, dramatically throw off all that had been, and revamp the very basis of how she lives? Or would she immediately seek a swift return to the most ordinary routine, the comforting safety of exactly what she had before this traumatic event intruded?

This resonated because I have the same questions. Cancer is a traumatic event, and getting rid of it is a long and sometimes frightening ordeal, too. Mortality looms. When treatment is done, will I want to be reborn, revamping all that led up to this, or will I want to resume the safety of all I have built, the life that came before, because it is comforting?  I can see both, clearly, in opposition and in congruence. I'll keep you posted.

Thursday, June 5, 2014

Making it...

Walking around bald in public is like walking around with a cuddly cute puppy; everyone likes to come over and schmooze. They don't actually pet my head, but some of them would like to. I've never, until now, been told on a regular basis that I have a really nice, round head.

Instead of tips on housebreaking and chewing disasters, I get advice like, "Baking soda can cure cancer." and "Watch this TEDTalk about wave therapy..." They also have stories about others they know who did this, sometimes admitting it didn't work; the chemo friend didn't make it. I don't much mind that - I know people who didn't make it, too, plus I read stuff.

But I know lots of folks who are making it, in every sense of the word, with cancer and without. We are all making it if we get up and open our eyes. We've all got struggles and challenges, and truly, the only difference is mine is visible. And being bald is way low on the list; it is just the one I'm reminded of when I catch my reflection and remember. But I've got a really nice, round head.

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Half full...

Apparently, it is true: each round of chemo is, as one friend put it, a bit harder to climb out of. She demonstrated this by grasping and clawing the air above her, as if pulling herself out of an abyss. I appreciate drama; I study drama. Her enactment turns out to be maddeningly real for me this time.

Staying calm when I feel horrendous is always the hardest part. I am a knee jerk catastrophiser, as the men who live with me would no doubt attest to. When something is wrong, everything is wrong: we are going to the poor house, someone who needs to study and practice more won't get into college, which I wouldn't be able to pay for anyway because of bad planning and profligate waste, plus we are wrecking the environment. And the house smells like dogs.

Meanwhile, the real problem is that I feel like a bus hit me, and my brain is foggy and doesn't snap to when I need it, and nothing, but nothing tastes good or even edible. There is pain all over, except in my mouth, which feels post-dental, Novocaine-wearing-off numb, and my stomach lurches around like a fighting drunk. The exhaustion and muscle weakness sneaks in, resisting my resistance. Used to being physically strong, capable, professional, independent, I buckle in frustration at trying to finish a task that would have been a doddle pre-chemo. Yet the tasks keep coming; work is non-negotiable.

I know this won't last, I know I will get through this, I know it is worth it, I know only the strong are given such hard times - all the things people have been telling me over the months this has been happening. The kindness of so many, especially my men here, soothes and heals me. My cup is half full; three out of six rounds done and dusted. But I would like the coffee in the cup to taste like coffee again.


Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Phantom Hair Syndrome...

Last night, while climbing into bed, I reached back to pull the black elastic off of my ponytail, so it wouldn't bother me in the night, as I've done so many times in my life.

The problem was, none of it was there: the hair, the ponytail, the elastic.

Maybe that's why last night I had the first bald dream - in my dream, my baldness played a feature role. Or maybe because I had gone to an all day meeting with some people I know, who knew me with hair, as well as some new people, who have no frame of Cheryl-with-hair reference. One person I had spent two days with last year had trouble placing me. Then the look on her face went from confusion, to surprise, to embarrassment in about three seconds. I noted that she looked more tired - older and worn; I'm sure the look on my face mirrored hers.

Another friend, who had not seen me in a few months, hugged me and said, "Last time I saw you, you weren't so....bald!"  His warmth and frankness were better than averted eyes.

At my son's school concert, reactions were a bit similar: non-recognition, surprise, but I also scared a few small children, who blatantly stared. I'm embarrassed to admit enjoying that suspicious look young kids get when they are puzzling out "what is this and why is it different from normal?" Dads can be bald; a bald mom is seriously fishy. The honesty of unsocialization.

Phantom Hair Syndrome has happened before: I reach back to push my hair off my neck, or up to brush it out of my eyes, and find air. Disconcerting, but not all that weird. I'm adapting. My subconscious sometimes pushes up a message to my conscious mind that I should cover my head - bald is somehow shameful. Thinking of the ways shaving someone's head is used to humiliate them,  I remind myself there is no shame here, no humiliation, merely self-care and healing.

Maybe I make some people uncomfortable with the reality of cancer treatment, part schadenfreude, part fear. If so, okay - we all need reminders that humans come in a fragile vessel, and life is tennous regardless of what we tell ourselves.

And, wow, it is SO much cooler now that the summer heat is kicking in! I may shave my head every summer from now on.



Sunday, May 11, 2014

The divine ordinary...

It is Mother's Day. Before I became a mother, in spite of trying, when I never thought I would be, this was a very hard day each year. My delusions of being a mother were all wrong, but I clung to them - how would I know?

Now I've been a mother for fourteen years and nearly nine months. As a single mother for fourteen years and four months, Mother's Day was somewhat optional. Sometimes I'd make a fuss, and sometimes I wouldn't. Like last year - I made the Love Child walk the Canal Path with me. With no one to prompt him to do things, they didn't always happen - no one saying "what should we do for Mom?". Two years ago, he got up early and poured boiling water into the French press for coffee; we ended up at his first ER visit. Like I said, somewhat optional. 

So now I have cancer (you probably heard about that if you are reading this) and it's Mother's Day. I have had a divine ordinary day. This year, the Love Child gave me flowers he picked (I'm not asking where) and posted funny stuff on my wall: http://youtu.be/JG1_393MvaQ. It is the end of the semester; I've graded papers. I've procrastinated grading by posting too much in Facebook. I've done piles of laundry and bought dog food. I've spoken to my mother-in-law, to thank her for having dear husband, and my mother, who is out on the sailboat. Both husband and I marvel that we have both mothers, both parents, still married, at our age - our children don't. (Well, they have us alive, but not married to their parent.)

Divine ordinary makes me divinely happy. Cancer makes everything dramatic and uncertain, a whole new, unknown territory unchosen to travel, and many days I succumb to worry and uncertainty, and freak out. I'd venture to guess that a day of ordinary happiness is probably what most cancer patients want and need. So I'm grateful.  

Saturday, May 3, 2014

Not even now...

Okay, the post about Hitting Pause...?  I lied. I admit it. Chalk it up to wishful thinking. The minute I believe the post-chemo super crud is abating, I tear around resuming and inventing tasks and projects for home and work. Making up for lost time.

Today, dear husband and I walked up the sunny side of the street, on our way to the farmers market and our favorite shop, Olde Towne Butcher. Cooking projects top my list when my taste buds show glimmers of returning.

We passed a doorway where a young man stood half in, half out. He puffed on a blue enamel pen-like thing, and a tiny cloud of white mist lingered. Dear husband explained it as we walked on: a marijuana vaporizer. I smelled nothing, but as he described it, I wouldn't - everything smokey disappears.

An hour later, on our way back, laden with foodstuffs, I looked over at the same house and saw the young man lounging on the narrow porch, on a folding chaise, just listening to some Beatles wafting out through the open door. No book, no computer - not even a smart phone. Just chillin', enjoying some happy.

My envy was wide and deep. Not for the high - the few times pot has been in my vicinity, I've wandered off; it isn't for me. It was seeing someone able to wake up on a Saturday, kick back, be so intentional about enjoying doing nothing.  I wanted to wander in.

That kind of permission-giving, the kind that says "go right ahead and joyfully do nothing," doesn't live here in my head, not even now that it's bald.

Thursday, May 1, 2014

Chemo patient walks into a bar...

More and more, I'm finding humor allows me to deal with what is happening in my life. When I feel absolutely disgusting from the toxins pumped into me, somehow the absurdity blooms, and the humor is there, ripe for the picking. When I begin feeling better, and have to get back to the quotidian, I find even more to chuckle, guffaw, chortle, and snicker about.

I feel almost shameful about this reaction; it's a bit like being in 7th grade gym class, desperately not wanting to be there, but enjoying the potential for snark in every silly thing being required (you may not have hated gym as much as I did, but you must have known not everyone was having fun dribbling).  It would be more proper to take it all seriously; it's a serious illness and treatment. Much of it is hideous. And yet, wow. Funny.  

Maybe it began when the surgeon told me about putting this port in me, under my skin. It makes it possible to pump powerful drugs into my jugular vein. Or is it my carotid artery? I am a woman who has only fainted twice, both times when someone described their medical procedure. The fact that I could listen to her tell me about putting a bit of technology under my skin, and into my vein/artery, and yet not flop over and require those smelling salts taped up in every examining room means I am seeing the wacky in all of this. I suppose the best description is in David Byrne/Talking Heads song, "Once In a Lifetime":  how did I get here?!?  

I have found myself in another part of the world. 





Saturday, April 26, 2014

So, bald...so bald.

I said I'd keep you posted at the end of Breaking Up With My Hair: maybe I jumped the gun, shaving my head - there is still plenty of stubble. Or would it have looked skimpy, and pasted on by now? 

Bald is both better and worse than I'd ever expected. Why do many things in life turn out that way?

Better: when a hot flash flashes, no big deal. Chemo stirs up hormones, starting a dance; flashes come mostly at night, and without layers of steamy hair, I'm quickly cooled. Showers are fast; so little to do! Hats and scarves prove exciting, challenging, altering, worth the effort. 

Worse: I don't feel like me. No, that isn't true. I FEEL like me; I don't look like me. I look like a bald man. I see this in the mirror sometimes: 


The other morning, dear husband walked in (I was in a chair, in my pink robe, huddled over my computer) and said I looked like Pema Chodron:

Both of these people are lovely; I just never thought I'd resemble them. 

Confronting my whole face is surprising, confusing. Hiding behind hair for years, it was rarely all out there at once. Now, no hiding. 

This wouldn't be bad for like a week. But this will probably be the case until Christmas or so, when I might maybe have something like hair, to be determined. I'll keep you posted. 




Friday, April 25, 2014

Two roads...

When a crisis comes along, roads diverge, reflection is inevitable  – as when my late husband died suddenly, and five years of achieving shared dreams diverged in one horrifying minute.  After reflecting, I sold the farm, boarded the horses, moved to Annapolis, and went back for a St John’s grad degree in the Great Books, seeking answers to the Great Questions: the good, the meaning of life, higher powers, purpose, desires, reality – all good stuff worthy of reading, sharing the Great Conversation with like minded scholars. Life-altering results ensued: a vocation, from vocatus, a calling. 

This cancer allows me two privileges I didn’t have then: I can control the process of the crisis, rather than being the victim of the uncontrollable, and I am privileged to have at hand the love and support of both my son and my husband, two deeply kind men who feed my soul, stretch my mind, play me music, and make me laugh. I have a flow of kindness coming from the most loving of friends and family, lifting me in myriad ways: flowers, food, handmade hats, silky scarves, gifts of prayers, poetry and service, baskets and bags of comfort and joy. I can take all this rich privilege and help myself to heal.  I use "privilege" intentionally - as defined: "something regarded as a rare opportunity and bringing particular pleasure."


And that, as Frost says, has made all the difference.

Thursday, April 17, 2014

The "C" Word

It’s 4:30 in the morning, and I’m worrying about Amish carthorses. 

I didn’t get to the mistreated carthorses directly. Before that came the lost Chihuahua found running up the road, skinny and huge eyed, probably confused as hell. 

Before that was the report that my child has been getting some C’s at school. My guilt at not paying more attention lately to his homework or studying looms large. What kind of educator am I; like the shoemaker whose kids have holes in their shoes?

But today, he is leaving for Costa Rica, a ten-day trip without me, and yesterday, the woman cutting his hair, who comes from Korea, was almost weeping as she told me about the ferry that sank, full of school kids on a traditional Korean class trip. Hundreds of children, from the same classes at the same school, from the same town, now simply gone. My heart groans at the horror of this. It is so ominous to hear it, the evening before he leaves with his classmates.

Children, classmates, Costa Rica, C’s, Chihuahua, carthorses…I don’t have to be an analyst to see the connections of all these C words.  My own C word, the word people used to whisper, hangs there, a conundrum in the midst of it all.

For me, my 56 years would suffice, and I know my dear husband would manage if he lost me, just as I did when I lost my spouse. But because of my son, only 14, letting this take me is non-negotiable, not until he is grown. That is, somehow, a comfort.

Thursday, April 10, 2014

Hit pause...

For the last fifteen years, I've hustled for things: degrees, jobs, certifications, grants, awards, income, a home, my child's education. Never once have I regretted the choices I've made: to go back to school, get into this profession, raise my son on my own, valuing his education. Even when I so happily married my dear husband, in December, I never felt I would back off pushing, day after day, to learn more, find new ways to teach, create new projects, new challenges for my own learning, and for my son's.

That was then; this is now.

Six weeks after the wedding, just into the Spring semester, when that very young doctor sadly said that I had cancer, one of those movie sound-effect screeching brakes went off in my head. It went off, I noted it, and then I ignored it.

It doesn't matter, I thought. I can come back fast after surgery, get all my work done online, miss some office hours, maybe a class or two, but keep pushing. At the time, doctors were telling me, "oh, a lumpectomy, some radiation, Tamoxifen for five years." Not too disruptive. Just keep pushing.

Then things got rockier. The sentinel nodes were positive. Some other things were also not so good - numbers and letters. Staging: 2B. Not not 2B. More surgery to take more nodes. Oh, wait, a black spot on my shin; yes, that's a melanoma, we need to take lots more shin, maybe skin graft. While we are in, we will put in a chemo port.

Finally, after the second surgery, there was a day I felt I simply couldn't take it. I'd been hurting for months. I palpably realized how someone gives up. I thought of just refusing any more treatment and going into a hospice (which I pictured like a rambling, white country house with wicker wheelchairs, peaceful, birds chirping).

From where I am now, some weeks later, this sounds ridiculously dramatic. Obviously I was worn out, drugged up, and needed to stay in bed. And I did. What I came away with after that, and after the first round of chemo, is that I can pause the hustle. "Give pause" is a rich phrase; something that gives one pause is notable, remarkable, profound. Pushing has its place; so does pausing.

Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Breaking up with my hair.

The one thing everyone seems to know about chemo is that the receiver goes bald. This one side effect of many is most visible, and it flouts our fundamental concept of femininity.

I had a friend, years back, who would shave her head a few times a year to celebrate leaving her patriarchal marriage for a woman. Her husband always insisted she have long flowing hair. She jettisoned the hair and the husband for happiness.  

Now I  have a young friend who shaves her glorious head when she wishes for change, most recently after a breakup. It is, it seems, a liberation and an expression of control, both things women struggle with in their lives.  She takes my hand and rubs it over her stubble, sleek as silk, warm and cozy as a puppy. 

My hair has been a friend and a bane at once. Presumptions are made about blonds; I've offered students a point of extra credit if they can tell me a blond joke that makes me laugh. I seek to exploit the stereotype, mocking my occasional blond behavior. But I have always been aware that I live in a culture that rewards my straight blond hair. I have probably gotten away with things I shouldn't have, more than a few speeding tickets in my youth, better seats on planes in my business travel days, and probably many a thing I wasn't even conscious of, like better grades and jobs. 

So becoming bald will be revelatory, much like when the right side of my face suddenly caved in, paralyzed by a rare form of shingles that attacked my facial muscles. I learned fast how someone who looks and sounds funny can be treated. But I also learned about the random compassion of strangers and near strangers; living in a tiny Scottish village at the time, I was prayed for, smiled at, and given the choicest fish by the fishmonger who drove around town twice a week, honking near my door. The Arbroath smokies I was sold were the plumpest and juiciest, and my cod was practically wiggling. 

Becoming bald will have its lessons, too. I know I will miss running my hands through my hair when I'm bored or flirting, and will have to seek new ways to express a few things. Unlike my sudden facial paralysis, I'm gradually breaking up with my hair, being nice to it one minute, and distaining it the next, putting a bit of distance between us so that when it starts falling onto the computer keyboard, I can walk in and shave it off, remorseless. 

I'll let you know how it goes. 



Tuesday, April 8, 2014

"How is your son handling it?"

Last evening:
Love Child (LC): Mom, did you get that medication permission slip for my trip to Costa Rica?
Me: I gave it to you last week!
LC:  Hmmm...where is it?
Me: Ack!  I had to take it to the doctor! I had to get it signed! I had to pick it up! I put in in an envelope with Mr. Steinberger's name on it and gave it to you!
LC: And you did all that with CANCER!  Here it is. I'll give it to him tomorrow....thank you.

Monday, April 7, 2014

Just found this. Charles Bukowski:

For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can’t readily accept the God formula, the big answers don’t remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command or faith a dictum. I am my own God.
We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state and our educational system.
We are here to drink beer.
We are here to kill war.
We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.
We are here to read these words from all these wise men and women who will tell us that we are here for different reasons and the same reason.

Wanting great food, but...

Traveling through the cancer/food blogs led me to a range of ideas; I found this sunshiny chef writer, Rebecca Katz. http://rebeccakatz.com/  Her site says: "the science & alchemy of yum." It says she is "an MS, author, educator, and culinary translator." (I have to think about that last bit.)

I saw this creation, poached coconut ginger salmon: http://rebeccakatz.com/category/protein-building-foods/



I thought how much I might like to make that creation. Then I read the blurb. It says it's infused with lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves.  

Now, I do love them both, and in the past, I grew huge lemongrass plants. But I don't have anything like that now, and they don't sell lemongrass at the Giant grocery store, and definitely not the Kaffir lime leaves. I'd have to drive out to that "international market" that really is Asian, and see if they had some. It's not on the way to anywhere. 

So the stress of finding what it is I'd need in Fredericksburg, Virginia, while I'm feeling pretty punk, off and on, from chemo, means there is not much likelihood of me getting this on the stove. 

Maybe if I lived in NYC again, and kaffir lime leaves were on every street corner...

So, FOOD?

Lots of STUFF written. What's useful?

http://www.npr.org/2014/04/07/295800503/chemo-can-make-food-taste-like-metal-heres-help

http://youtu.be/afVXfM-Jtb8

http://www.livestrong.com/article/288040-nutritional-drinks-or-powders-for-cancer-patients/

http://www.livestrong.com/article/329102-protein-and-chemotherapy/

http://www.livestrong.com/article/347549-easily-digested-foods-for-cancer-patients/

http://www.livestrong.com/article/337720-foods-that-taste-good-to-chemotherapy-patients/

Sunday, April 6, 2014

What came next:

So after biopsies, two rounds of surgery: lumpectomy, lymph node dissections, and an extra fillip: excision of a melanoma on my shin. Implant of a port for chemo.

Chemo: a frontier. Unknowns right, left, forward. Steroid highs, hormone flushes, aliens rumbling around every organ, taste buds blown. Body earthquake.

Flows of kindness, flows of love, from so many. Weeping with the knowledge that this is undeserved.

Weeping with frustration; I'm not the woman I'm used to. This woman is flawed, probably her own fault, by truly bad habits and behavior. No kidding oneself; cells don't lie.

Saturday, April 5, 2014

In the beginning...

I got married on December 15th, 2013.

On January 31, 2014, I was told I have breast cancer. It was a short honeymoon...

I'm 56. I have a fourteen year old son. I have my parents. I have a job I love. I have friends I cannot imagine not having. So I'm going at this the best way I can, my way.

When I start a new class at the college where I teach, I always refer to it as an adventure. An adventure isn't always great, and it doesn't always go where we hope it will go. But there is always something to be learned, and something to be gained by having taken it. Many times, there are unforeseen, unexpected riches. So I'm calling this my Breast Cancer (BC) Adventure.