Stranger in a strange land

The bizarre parallel universe of Having Cancer is marked by different customs in speech, dress and manners. Sometimes it causes cross-cultural issues when I travel back to the land of the healthy.

For instance, every nurse, doctor, nutritionist and phlebotomist I encounter at the cancer center makes detailed inquires about my bathroom activities, leading me to feel that the topic must be intensely fascinating to others. When people at holiday parties asked how I'm doing, I had to restrain myself from proudly telling them that my elimination continues to be exemplary.

On the bright side, the denizens of the cancerverse tell me over and again how young I am. Being immersed in a typical middle-aged struggle with sun damage and gravity, I was initially flattered -- until I realized that being "young" and having cancer is a strike against me. Cancer in the young is almost always more aggressive.

Unlike most chemo patients, I haven't gone completely bald, but lost about three-quarters of my hair, evenly dispersed. My head looks like a newly planted field; each square inch of scalp has perhaps two dozen inch-long hairs that wave valiantly in the breeze, a total Tweety bird look. Other chemo patients gush over how much hair I have, as if my tresses were as long and lustrous as those of Angelina Jolie or Julia Roberts. In the real world, people avert their eyes as if from a disaster scene when a hot flash compels me to whip off my hat in a store or other public place.

Mark and I found ourselves recently at the home of a type of faith healer, surrounded by other cancer patients. It was like Lourdes, but tres Marin. I wished we had worn flowing fair-trade batik garments. I wanted to tell everyone we were from Berkeley to claim some kind of crunchy cred.

I was almost embarrassed when we went around the room for introductions; sure, I have Stage III cancer, but I was in far better shape than most of these poor souls, many of whom were Stage IV.

One emaciated man, who had a type of cancer we'd never heard of, lay on the couch the entire time, occasionally moaning; he recoiled from touch as though it burned. Some of the patients were themselves medical professionals, including a doctor with Stage IV pancreatic cancer. My dad died of pancreatic cancer four months after diagnosis; among cancers, it is one of the quickest to kill. This woman, who looked barely 35, said she had tremendous faith that our host could heal her so she could continue to raise her 3-year-old and 18-month-old. Nothing, nothing seems more tragic to me than a mother of young children losing her life; I jammed my fist into my mouth and bit down hard to keep from sobbing when she told her story.

The healer, a warm and charismatic man with a good sense of humor, complimented Mark on his radiant aura.

I was jealous. In perhaps not my finest wifely moment, on the way home I said, "You know, honey, it's easy to have the prettiest aura in the room when everyone else there has Stage III or Stage IV cancer."

Yet, cynical journalist that I am, I do plan to submit myself to the healer’s ministrations. As I understand it, he will massage my aura. No pills, potions or needles are involved. I have nothing to lose but a little time and money, and really, it can't hurt. Considering that my conventional Western medicine treatment can, in fact, hurt (I have signed lengthy disclosures to that effect) -- not just with the temporary side-effects but with long-term significant bodily damage -- a little aura massage might do me a world of good.