Is your stomach churning? R asked. She'd called to see how I was doing the day before getting my breast cut off due to a disease that could kill me. My stomach wasn't churning. I wasn't in turmoil. I wasn't trembling. I was calm and fairly cheerful....
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Monday, February 26, 2007
The Bad Girls of Cancer
Tonight was my last yoga class with two real breasts. I thought about it as we lay face down on the floor to do our leg stretches. We did a lot of back arches, too, and I wondered when I would be able to do them again. I was excited that my Bad Girls...
Sunday, February 25, 2007
A Day in Which I Buy a Mastectomy Camisole & Fail to Sway an Alderman; plus Strangers on a Train
The nurse at Fancy Hospital had e-mailed me, asking if I wanted a mastectomy camisole. I looked it up on line and it seemed like a good thing. It's supposed to be smooth against your surgical wound, protecting it from the outside world, and it has a...
Thursday, February 22, 2007
A Nervous Laugher
I have become a nervous laugher. I told N that she should meet with my student intern, that I would normally want a three-way meeting, but I didn't think I could schedule it because--lower my voice, move in closer, laugh a little--I'm having a mastectomy...
The Willy Loman of Female Diseases
(Warning: This section, especially the end, is not for the faint of heart. If that's you, I suggest skipping this and going to For Better or for Worse, the best melodrama on the comics pages.)First, I have to say that I speak pretty clearly. I took speech...
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Lesser of Two Evils
Tonight I walked to the Lesser of Two Evils chain bookstore and went wild in a Cancer-Bitchy way. I had a $50 gift card as part of payment/thank you for two workshops I did in a high school this fall. I was also paid by check and got a clock that had...
Monday, February 19, 2007
A Filling Without a Sandwich
I am a member of the Sandwich Generation--Baby Boomers (mostly women) who are caught between taking care of cranky teenagers and creaky parents. Except I have no children and my surviving parent walks the mall five days a week, lifts weights in her morning...
Saturday, February 17, 2007
Thanks, Britney
In solidarity with Cancer Bitch, pop star Britney Spears has shaved her head. She's also gotten a few tattoos. This after going in then going out of a fancy rehab program (fancy as adj., *not* at my Fancy Hospital). Thank you, Britney. I didn't know...
Friday, February 16, 2007
Gotta Date
Gotta date. Finally. To the prom. The total mastectomy prom. My date is Wednesday, Feb. 28, at 4pm at Fancy Hospital. A total mastectomy is not the same as a radical mastectomy. The latter is hardly done anymore. A radical is so total. Totally total....
Thursday, February 15, 2007
The Other Hand
A new study shows that men with vasectomies (such as L) are more likely to suffer from a certain kind of dementia where you can still garden but you can't think of the name for tulip.Get ready for an onslaught of late-middle-aged male mimes.On the other...
In the Office of the Plastic Surgeon to the Stars/Following the Lump
Yesterday I went to see the Plastic Surgeon to the Stars. The office was near downtown in an old building with seemingly endless arcades in the lobby. The "lobby" was actually in a cross shape, containing stores and entrances to residences. The office...
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Lump in the Throat/Hail to Tricky Dickie/Marbles in a Barn
Today I had a lump in my throat most of the day. That is what I call anxiety. That is what I felt throughout high school and college and after, during two dozen years of talk talk talk therapy and insight therapy and diving-down-deep-intoto-your feelings...
Monday, February 12, 2007
Confusion sets in
We went to Plainer Hospital today, formerly known in this blog as Pretty Good. Plainer just seems more apt. We waited more than two hours in the modest (white and gray cherry blossom wallpaper, two real and one artifical plant, dun-colored industrial...
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Activism
I am thinking I should have something more cheerful here instead of death and cancer. Even the Cancer Bitch needs some non-cancer space. I'm grateful for the oases of time when I don't think about breast cancer. All of a sudden I'll think: I haven't...
Public and private
In Bathsheba's Breast I'm reading about William Halsted, the creator of the Halsted radical mastectomy at Johns Hopkins, and I suddenly remember that my great-grandmother's sister had cancer (breast?) and was treated at Johns Hopkins: a strange frisson...
Friday, February 9, 2007
Doing well
People say I'm doing well. They say I sound good. I joke. I don't think it's denial. But do people in denial admit they're in denial? On the phone N said something to the effect that everyone hates hospitals. But I don't. You might find it all interesting,...
Thursday, February 8, 2007
Driving to Distraction
My emotions have been pretty even all this time, but my brain has been scattered all over the landscape. Or maybe I'm prematurely experiencing the symptoms of cancer therapy. I feel like I already have "chemo brain"--memory lapses that come from chemo....
I Am Milked
You can be, too. You can try it at home. Put cream on your nipple to soften it. Cover with a plastic see-through band-aid. Over that lay a warmed purple velvety bag filled with stale-bordering-on-rancid flax seeds. After 10 minutes have someone come...
Benign!
The right breast ((o)) , that is.The left one will still have to go.Maybe I'll have a farewell party for it.And serve scoops of peach ice cream with cherries on t...
Wednesday, February 7, 2007
Telling
The cashier at Trader Joe's who asks, How was your week? Do you say, Well, I had my first MRI, and I'm going to find out if I have cancer in my second breast?The good friend of a good friend you run into who asks how you are, and you say, OK, and then...
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
Austro-Hungarian Empire/Breast Grid
We left the house at about 6:40 a.m. for my MRI-biopsy appointment. The sky was pink over the lake. I knew it was sunrise, and I knew I'd seen sunrises before, but I couldn't remember the last time. I try not to get up during the single-digit hours....
Monday, February 5, 2007
An aside: Today I am a Unitarian.
I ran across a "Belief-O-Matic" quiz today and took it. I line up 100 percent with Unitarians and 94 percent with secular humanists. I'm 52 percent attuned with the tenets of Reform Judaism, neck-and-neck with Christian Science. I never thought I would...
Sunday, February 4, 2007
Jews and Jesus, Death and Taxes
I cried two-and-a-half times today, for about 20 seconds each time, and mostly because I was feeling irritable. It was embarrassing to cry, even in front of myself, because the cause was sentimental claptrap for one-and-a-half of the times. But the first...
Saturday, February 3, 2007
Whodunnit
Whodunnit: two household mysteries1. The plumber came to figure out why water leaked downstairs yesterday when I took a long shower. After running the water and going downstairs and back, he couldn’t figure it out, because of course it didn’t leak when...
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