Guest blogger: The C Squad's Lori

My first breast cancer mentor, the fabulous Ms. Lori from the C Squad, sent this moving and trenchant reaction to my last blog post. It deserves its own showcase, so here it is.
For an extra treat, check out the linked Barbara Ehrenreich and Molly Ivins pieces.

--Carolyn


Yes. Cancer sucks. No doubt about it. That’s why October is the scariest month – it’s not the witches, it’s the ghouls telling us we should buy products festooned with pink ribbons – “until there’s a cure.” Pink ribbons tart up everything from dog food to toilet paper. I’m sorry, but I don’t want to “wipe for the cure.”

Those wretched pink ribbons could only have been invented by someone who never had this disease, because as you well know, there is nothing pink and fluffy about breast cancer.

Until there’s a cure? How about “until we find the CAUSE,” so that we blameless vixens don’t have to suffer the god-awful “cures.” During chemotherapy, I remember thinking, “If this stupid disease doesn’t kill me, the cure sure as hell will.”

Rant over. Barbara Ehrenreich, in “Welcome to Cancerland: the Kitsch and Culture of Breast Cancer Awareness” does it more eloquently than I ever could. So did the late, great Molly Ivins, who died from this crappy disease.

After I was diagnosed with breast cancer a second time, and before my first-ever chemotherapy infusion six years ago on October 1st, I attended a chemo education class. The purpose? To “fight fear with knowledge.” Right. The class was filled with folks who were either spitting mad or helplessly weeping. The angry ones heckled the hapless nurse educator and her cheerful PowerPoint, illustrating frowning cancer cells, buff white blood cells, and smiling broccoli. Those hecklers were recidivists, returned to chemo penitentiary because the first incarceration had failed to reform their badass criminal cancers. They weren’t buying any of the “fight fear with knowledge” crap. They just wanted to fight. The weepers were worse: they simply sat there, sobbing My 49-year-old self walked out of that miserable session more terrified than the first time I was told I had breast cancer, at 39.

Remember, too, that along with the happy cruciferous vegetable lectures, medicos will narrate the treatment worst-case scenario style. Or they don’t tell you anything at all, so that you won’t “manifest unnecessary symptoms.” Huh? Who would want to make this stuff up?

You will experience many of the gruesome side effects, but you won’t experience all, or to the hideous degree described. And you will survive all of them, and live to tell the tale.

I have neuropathy in my hands and feet. I am tormented by severe osteoarthritis, which is a side effect of the Femara. My finger is now deformed, as are my wrist and toes. I also have two broken ribs. Blame it on the bossa nova? I think not. But I can still hike, run, dance, and climb trees. I just do it more carefully than before.

Cancer sucks. The second time around, after mastectomy two (glad I’m not a dog, because they have six breasts, or is it eight?) I was more terrified of the chemotherapy to come than I was of the amputations already endured. I admitted my fear to my yoga teacher. Robert gave me the best advice about how to survive a catastrophe. He told me that I could waste energy on fear, or cultivate curiosity.

I didn’t get it at first. Who wants to be curious about nausea and baldness? Then it became clear. Anger would starve me. Curiosity would feed me. Anger made me dwell upon how unfair it all was: I didn’t do anything to deserve two separate breast cancers, ten years apart. I didn’t deserve the on-the-job harassment I faced when I returned to work, the denial of simple accommodations to me to work because I didn’t “look or act sick enough.” I didn’t deserve the spontaneous bleeding, the feet that ached so badly I could barely walk, the metallic taste of food, the fatigue, the depression, the sleeplessness, the night sweats, the terror that every twinge meant recurrence. And I really didn’t deserve the stupid comments, including one from the amply endowed coworker who told me that I was “lucky” that because I was small-breasted, my mastectomies weren’t traumatic.

Nobody deserves this, least of all we who are enduring the indignities of cancer treatments and their aftermath. But the angrier I got about my situation, the more helpless I felt. I couldn’t do anything to stop the pain – and the stupid remarks – but I could learn from them. I could cultivate curiosity about the physical changes, write comic character sketches about insensitive clods, pretend I was a wee aquanaut adventuring through my body, seeing cell division and death up close, grin about “Cancer Girl Action Figure” with her cape and removable breasts and hair (ask Victoria), buy gorgeous lingerie to wear when the scars healed, dream about hair growing back, and the audacious short hair styles I had never had the guts to try.

Sixteen years after the first diagnosis, and six years after the second, I still must cultivate curiosity. Bad cancer things are still happening to me. But so are good things. I have met extraordinary women (hello, Carolyn and Victoria!), changed careers from one I hated to one I love, run a triathlon, hiked a mountain, obtained a tattoo, and launched a successful performing career that has taken me from Telluride to Atlanta to Italy.

In working to let go of fear, I have experienced moments of fearlessness. In enduring pain, I have grown strong. In bearing insensitive and downright cruel remarks, I have become wise. Okay, not ALL the time on the wisdom thing. Sometimes I want to rip open my shirt, Superman style, and scream at the offender, “Does THIS look ‘sick enough’ for you?” But I digress.

Consider your upcoming chemotherapy and the experiences to follow grist for your writer’s mill. Remember: curiosity did not kill the proverbial cat, because satisfaction brought him back. Thursday will come, chemotherapy will happen, it will suck, and you will be okay. Trust me on this one. Here’s to you, my fearless, brave, beautiful and curious friend.