I've changed my mind. I don't want to have cancer.
Well, obviously I never wanted to have it, but I had bought into the image of myself facing it with grace and courage.
I'd be glamorously brave despite being ever-so-slightly wan. Like Ali MacGraw in "Love Story," my perfect lip gloss and eyeliner would signify that good grooming always triumphs over vile side effects like mouth sores, nausea and constipation.
Admittedly, I don't currently wear either lip gloss or eyeliner, I've never been well groomed, and I'm married to a man who really prefers the au naturel look. But in just one of the many, many upsides of my diagnosis, I'm gonna take a free seminar about how to glob on makeup to distract from chemo baldness and steroid puffiness. And I'll get a bag full of free cosmetics!
As the days tick down toward my first chemo treatment, I'm disintegrating into a jittery wreck. I whine and wheedle whenever I speak to someone from the cancer center. It doesn't help that they're neither as responsive nor as systematic as one would hope. Various random staffers call me from there with conflicting and confusing updates and requests, or else they don't call when I want them to.
"Well, Dr. D's nurse didn't return my call when she said she would, so maybe I'd better find another oncologist," I snapped at a hapless scheduler who called me this morning.
"What am I, crazy?" I barked sarcastically at a research assistant. "Why would I want to be part of a clinical trial for a drug when the FDA is seriously considering withdrawing it from the market?"
It's now confirmed. I start chemo one week from today on Thursday, October 7.
Yes, I know that it's just a few months out of my life. Yes, I know that millions of people have been down this path before. Yes, I know that I'm lucky -- that I live in a time and a place with excellent medical care, that I have health insurance, that I have a wonderful support network, that my cancer was caught relatively early.
None of that helps with my giant snit fit.
Stop the treatment plan. I want to get off.
Dearest Carolyn. So you say that you can't wear tank tops and now you want to get off a train. Seems like regular, everyday, ordinary requests and wants...only...you're talking about the Not So Big C... What you have done, my dear friend is take that C and make it ordinary, everyday and regular...and that's a wonderful thing to accomplish. With your humor and your talent for real CREATIVE writing, you have taken cancer and made it sit in the corner for an extended time out. I've never known anyone that talked or wrote about their illness like you have done. I've learned so much and with that knowledge the fear of the illness is diminished. Yes you have health insurance. Yes cancer has been captured early...yes yes yes. But still it is what it is. A crappy thing to have to go through (at a minimum). But for us out here in blogg-land...it's an amazing journey, taken by an amazing woman...on or off...the train!
ReplyDeletelove from Sue and Larry too...from Nashville TN
Ditto Sue!
ReplyDeleteI cry and laugh reading this, and it's not so often that the two meet when thinking about cancer.
Carolyn it's been known that children often have tantrums when their system is overloaded and they need a relief by yelling, crying, sweating, and letting loose. It seems to help them re-set their tolerance, clear their mind, and move on (except of course when they do it in the grocery store and everyone freaks out). So have a few tantrums without punishment....you deserve them! xoxox
Hey, I think you ought to invent the Carolyn Stomp, a new and spiffy two-step that blows off anything you want it to! And who needs Gratitude when you can have Attitude! Stomp and Snark can be excellent friends on this ride, taking seats next to Tea and Honey, Grace and Gratitude. In this case, seems to me More IS Better!
ReplyDelete.... Christine from The Book Group
I am sorry your having to go through this Carolyn. Give me a call if you want to bitch or want some advice about dealing with hospitals.
ReplyDeleteI once go so mad at Kaiser that I took an axe handle to my telephone. It felt good!
This is not easy shit to go through.
Take Care,
Mark Mc
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ReplyDelete(sorry...typo fixed now) I say let the Inner Bitch come out -- now is her moment. That scheduler didn't return your call? Perhaps you WILL take your business elsewhere. And if the new oncologist's staff should make a similar misstep? They just may feel your wrath. We'll take you over the actress with the lip gloss smile every day of the week. xoxo
ReplyDeleteThank you for responding to my email today and for the gift of your blog. I have been reading it off and on all day long. I started with today's entry, read part-way down the page and then decided I had missed too much and needed to go back to the beginning.
ReplyDeleteI figured I'd skip the comments, but by the time I reached September, I wanted to read what your friends were saying. So I went back and read August again, and all the comments.
In the meantime, lower back pain, a bout with the vacuum cleaner that had gone on the fritz, the doggies, all intervened to give me a break from the feelings I couldn't quite manage.
Your humor is the saving grace -- I laugh and cry in almost the same breath. What a strange and wonderful gift you have to see the absurdity and the comedy even as it affects you so personally. Almost everyone laughs when someone else slips on the banana peel. (Not you. You're too kind hearted.)
But when life gives you cancer -- there I said it -- you've found a way to set up a van, take us on an MMT, and laugh once or twice each day, even as we feel your pain.
I love you more than words can say and thank you again for this gift of sharing your journey.
Perhaps you'll post some pictures after you've applied "gobs of make-up" and pink wigs. I've never seen you with more than a dab of lipstick.
Love Jill
thanks Carolyn for your amazing grace and creativity. Rit and I are sending you all of our positive energy.
ReplyDeleteI think you've earned the right to whine, wheedle, and have a snit fit! I love you dearly. You are one of the most wonderful, amazing, REAL human beings I know . . . Erika
ReplyDeleteI started to write a "personal" email to you and realized how positively selfish that would be. All of your energy must be devoted to YOUR health and the well-being of your family and not spent answering little notes even from "dear" friends.
ReplyDeleteJust wanted to say that you've spurred me on to make an appointment for a mammogram. I took the advice of the Committee which encouraged women my age with a clean bill of health to go every two years. Now, I've changed my mind. Every year and half is better.
xoxoxox