Deciduous me

As an East Coast transplant, I miss autumn.

One year, Mark and I went to Montreal and Quebec in October and feasted our eyes on the glorious symphonies of fiery reds, deeper russets, golds, persimmons, bronzes - it was like the Berkeley Bowl fruit aisle writ large across the sky.

This year, I'm celebrating in a simpler way: I have become deciduous.

What I'm shedding is just basic brown but there is plenty of it showering down like crisp fall leaves.

For the past four days, whenever I touch my head, my hand comes away with dozens of hairs adhered to it through static electricity. If I rake my fingers over my head, I end up with fistfuls of hair. My clothes look as if I've been romping with a very friendly cocker spaniel. Don't get me started on the couch, the tub and my pillow.

It didn't take long to figure out how messy this was gonna be.

Just like that, I gained the will to chop it off, although not a full Monty buzz cut.

My regular lady at the cut-rate salon did a nice job with a sort of Joan Baez in her mature days look and assured me that it would grow back curly.

Ben, my son, chauffeured me.

"Hmm, now we have the same haircut," he said when he picked me up.


And it's true! I like looking like a twin to my boy.

Now the sprinkling has slowed down, but if -- or rather when -- it picks up again, eventually I'll look like a twin to Mark, who already has expressed his pre-solidarity with my condition by sporting the chrome-dome look for some years now.


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Also did some pre-emptive wig shopping at a hospital-sponsored free place - one wig per cancer patient.




Here are the array of choices. Wanna guess which one I picked?








I decided to be a redhead, in keeping with my autumnal theme. (Second row)

Me and my hair: Never can say goodbye

Oh, my hair, my hair. Scraggly, limp, lank, stubborn. Even on my wedding day, after 60 minutes with the hot rollers and the curling iron and the can of hairspray and the hordes of hidden bobby pins, it collapsed like a bad soufflé on the five-minute trip from salon to venue, so the only ones who got to see it in all its poufy glory were me and the stylist.

My hair has always been like a no-goodnik boyfriend. You know you should give him the heave-ho, but when you finally make up your mind, he figures out which way the wind is blowing and gets all sweet and solicitous and you remember what you saw in him in the first place and just don’t have the heart to go through with it.

Whenever I start thinking it’s time for a drastic haircut, it manages to pull itself together and transform into little waves and tendrils that curl adorably. “Why can’t you be like that all the time?” I scold it. “We could have such a good relationship if you would just always act exactly the way I want you to act.”

That line of reasoning never worked on boyfriends either.

Now that its days are numbered, my hair has perked up remarkably. It practically does tricks every morning to prove how cute and cooperative it will be if I just let it hang in there. And I’d be glad to comply, since I really don’t think I’m gonna rock the bald look, but it’s not up to me.

Adriamycin causes hair loss 14 to 21 days after treatment. Cytoxan, my other current chemo drug, causes hair thinning. Some people’s hair doesn’t completely fall out on those two drugs, but they get a patchy look. Taxol, the chemo drug I’ll be getting in December and January, causes hair to fall out completely, sometimes overnight.

I’ll be bald for Halloween.

It doesn’t ring the same chimes as "I’ll be home for Christmas," but it does open up a world of costume ideas: Capt. Picard, Dr. Evil, Mr. Clean, Uncle Fester.

Hmm, all men. Who are the famous bald chicks?

Sigourney Weaver in “Aliens” and Natalie Portman in “V is for Vendetta” – but they didn’t have any distinguishing characteristics other than their bare pates that would sell a costume.

I’m now on day 15 after my first infusion, and so far I haven’t felt the tingling scalp that’s supposed to precede hair loss. But I want to be prepared with a wig for when I need to pass as normal, especially when I have to interview strangers for work or hit the grocery store without getting pitying looks. Luckily it’s almost winter, when I wear a hat every day anyway.

This chemo round induced the same malaise as the last time. The night after treatment I woke up nauseous at 3 a.m. and never got back to sleep but eventually the drugs quelled the nausea. Today I still feel under the weather, but am getting antsy that I need to venture out wig shopping.





Me and my hair. Truth to tell, I haven’t really tried that hard. We’ve stayed trapped in the ’70s for lo these many decades now. My high school graduation photo has the exact same long limp locks look as my Facebook profile pix. How sad is that?

So this is a chance to explore new turf. Goldilocks, Rapunzel, Little Orphan Annie. Angelina or Jennifer. Punk, professional, artiste, ingénue, sexy siren – it’s time to meet the new me.

Chemo Round #2

I've always prided myself on being a quick study. So, after one session, I felt that I'd grasped the essentials of chemo and was ready to move on.

It's just how I felt when I first got my period. Okay, I'm initiated and now I know "what it means to be a woman" in the immortal words of the Kotex pamphlet the school nurse handed out. So I'm done. When the next month rolled around, the repeat performance came as an unpleasant surprise.

"What, again?" l whined. "Are you kidding?" The vista of all the endless reruns for the rest of my life seemed impossibly dreary. (The pamphlet had neglected to mention the concept of menopause, although, at age 13, that was decades off anyway.)

That same sinking feeling descended last night when I realized that, yes, we'd be returning to the cancer center today for Round 2.

Around noon, Mark chirped, "It's time to go, honey."

I hissed at him and went slinking off.

He finally tracked me down in the closet where I was sulking and hauled me out by the scruff of my neck as I yowled pitifully.

Why, yes, I am a crazy cat lady. How did you know?

We dragged ourselves into the cancer center 30 minutes late and proceeded to hurry up and wait.

The blood draw got complicated. The needle went into my port fine, but the blood wouldn't come out. After deep breathing and waving my arms didn't work, they proceeded to have me lie on my back, then my side, along with more deep breathing and arm waves. Just as they were getting ready to break out a drug to dislodge whatever was obstructing the tube inside me, it finally started to flow.

To block out the medical travails, I tried to immerse myself in a magazine, but I'd made the mistake of picking one of the glossy periodicals just for cancer patients that lie around the waiting room. Essentially they're beautifully printed catalogs of pharmaceutical company ads interspersed with cheery tips about eating brocolli and blueberries. My eyes lit on a two-page spread about Neulasta, the shot I get 24 hours after each chemo session. They'd thoughtfully listed the side effects in a normal type size, so I was able to ponder the ramifications of ruptured spleen ("A ruptured spleen can cause death," the ad helpfully said) and acute respiratory distress.

Oh, and they make Neulasta out of E coli.

Note to self: Stick with People or Entertainment Weekly.

We got a private room again, thanks to my having a cold. They could hardly risk having Typhoid Mary sneeze all over her chemo roomie.

The routine was familiar. After I settled into the recliner, my nurse Valerian hooked up the pre-chemo IV bags (steroids and other anti-nausea meds) and the machine began its monotonous pumping.

When it was time for the Big Show -- Adriamycin, the red death, the red devil -- Valerian robed up in his HazMat gown and gloves in front of us, while I resolutely engaged in the most life-affirming activity I could conjure up: Shopping online for stuff I don't need.

I was typing in my credit card number while he was unwrapping the two foot-long syringes of red death. I pressed "Buy" as he inserted the first syringe into the tube dangling from my chest. The confirmation e-mail came as he started to press the plunger.

"I'm not getting any blood return," he said, frustrated. "You're going to have to lie on your side again."

As we reclined the chair, Valerian explained what he meant. "I have to see the blood return (it shows up in a little spur tube off the main one) so I know it's going into your vein and not anywhere else. It could burn you seriously if it's outside your vein."

That's also why they administer Adriamycin manually. "The machine could do it, but it wouldn't know to stop in time if you feel burning," he said.

Dr. D and the nutritionist were both pleased with my blood counts. The white cells are hanging in there -- thanks, Neulasta and let's skip that spleen stuff -- the iron was good, everything was pretty normal. I was as proud as if I'd passed a tricky calculus final.

We were out of there in less than five hours. If history repeats itself, I can expect to have a few days of feeling under the weather.

Two sessions down; six more to go. I'm gonna woman up. I'm gonna get through this.

Faking fitness

I feel the burn.

It’s that almost-pleasant ache you get after a hard workout. It’s a rather unfamiliar sensation since I’m not big into breaking a sweat, but I have taken a hike or two in my day and know how my muscles protested afterwards.

And now I get to experience that righteous glow of post-workout gratification without having to actually exercise.

My Neulasta shot is kicking in.

Neulasta stimulates your bone marrow to hurry up and make infection-fighting white blood cells to replace the ones wiped out by chemo. I’m getting a shot of it 24 hours after each chemo session.

So far it’s really not that bad. I’m not writhing from growing pains as agonizing as being stretched on a rack or immobilized by the sensation of cement hardening in my veins – both experiences that other chemo patients on Neulasta have described.

Instead I feel a burn in my legs, hips and back. It could pass as post-workout glow, except I’m not deluded enough to believe that my copious couch time and a few gentle walks could have generated this sensation.

I have been pumping iron, actually – every day. My version of it involves hefting six or seven bottles of dietitian-prescribed supplements, grunting to remove the child-proof caps and then choking down the Brobdingnagian pills plus one rather nasty tonic – a health-food-store version of Geritol for my iron-poor blood.

My other post-chemo effects have subsided to mild. The drugs did nip nausea in the bud, hallelulah. I’ve had some tummy upset since that first night but nothing killer. I’m exhausted and have been conking out for nine or 10 hours a night but that’s what I always do when I’m coming down with something – which is what this feels like.

All in all, I’m relieved that my most dire fears haven’t come to pass.

Chemo is cumulative. Its effects often get more pronounced and longer-lasting with each cycle so there may be more problems ahead, but for now, I’m breathing a sigh of relief to have made it through Round One.

The day after: Mal de mer

They lied.

At chemo orientation they said we’d feel relatively okay the day after treatment.

Last night (Thursday night, right after treatment), I was indeed fine. Mark and I strolled to the health food store, I cheerfully chug-a-lugged water and herbal tea as directed, ate a light dinner, watched some mindless TV and collapsed into bed by 9:30 p.m.

My eyes flew open at 1 a.m. My stomach was sending out major distress signals. From tummy to throat, unhappiness reigned.

They’d explained this to me over and over. Chemo kills all fast-growing cells. Your entire GI tract is one big mucous membrane, packed with cells that are constantly dying and developing. Chemo turns the lining of your stomach raw. Your stomach signals your brain that it’s not happy. Your brain sends a signal back, “Throw it up.”

The anti-nausea drugs act by blocking one or both of these signals. And they are working a bit. I don’t actually have to vomit. I just feel queasy. Unfortunately, it’s hard to ignore.

I tried to take deep cleansing breaths and clear my brain. “In, fresh. Out, flower.”

But my evil monkey mind tortured me with images of food as if it were trying to trick me into a mad dash to the bathroom.

Embarrassingly, one of my go-to images for relaxation comes from a Clairol Herbal Essence commercial circa 1970s. A cartoon girl with Rapunzel-worthy hair flits through a verdant forest until she reaches a beautiful mountain pool where she disrobes (the hair provides discreet coverage) and takes a refreshing dip (while polluting the water with those pretty effervescent shampoo suds).

Instead of helping me unwind, that image now conjured up the thought of all the water and liquids I’m supposed to drink, 64 ounces a day. The very idea of water was enough to clench my stomach a little more. I ran through various other beverage options – all seemed unpalatable. Getting frantic, I inventoried potential light foods I might be able to stomach. All seemed downright repulsive.

I could hear my stomach warning me as if a miniature mobster from a bad B movie had taken up residence in my body, “You’d better not try to put anything down here -- or you'll be sorry.”

FRIDAY AFTERNOON UPDATE: I wrote the above in the dark hours of despair. Initially I tried one of the antinausea meds Dr. D had recommended for nighttime, because it's supposed to induce drowsiness and stop nausea, but it did neither.

At 3 am, Mark convinced me to take the heavy-duty Emend which I was supposed to save for morning. "This is morning," he pointed out, reasonably enough. It goes down along with Decadron (a steroid). I have just two Emends, which cost a whopping $110 per pill, covered by insurance but I'd gladly pay double out of pocket.

And that did the trick. The nausea finally slipped away and I was back in bed by 4.

I woke up feeling just mildly "peakish." After a lifetime of loving to eat, overnight I have developed a deep disinterest in food. Still, breakfast went down okay and I'm sipping my fluids as directed.

Some folks told me that the steroids (I had IV ones before chemo plus the Decadron) would give me a burst of energy. I had imagined that I'd be bustling around the house, finally reorganizing the linen closet and prepping the garden for winter, if not actually hitting home runs and acing the Tour de France.

No such luck.

Once more I'm pleasing the kitties by lying docilely on the couch all the day long.

First chemo: Deflowered and doing okay

Wearing HazMat gear – a Smurf-blue gown and green surgical gloves – my nurse Monica entered my chemo room carrying two huge syringes filled with red-orange fluid.

It was Adriamycin, the most potent cancer-fighting drug. Patients call it “the red devil” or “the red death” for its devastating side effects – nausea, hair loss, mouth sores, exhaustion. I’d already heard a full disclosure that those effects could include cardiotoxicity – damage to the heart muscle – severe enough to cause congestive heart failure. Each patient has a lifetime quota of how much “red death” they can safely receive. My current treatment will amount to just under half my lifetime allotment. So if I get cancer again, there will still be a few magic arrows in my oncologist’s quiver.

“Are you ready?” Monica asked.

This was the moment I’d most dreaded, the one that had kept me up last night.

“Let me send Mark to get some ice chips,” I said. “I heard that keeping them in my mouth while you administer it might prevent the mouth sores.”

Monica laughed. “There’s a real trend now among patients who think that. It’s fine if it makes you feel better.”

I was a little disappointed that this tip – which I’d gleaned from other chemo patients – didn’t have a nurse’s seal of approval, but figured I might at least get a placebo effect.

Once I’d loaded my mouth with ice, making me feel like a squirrel preparing for winter, Monica inserted the first syringe into the tube that dangled from my port, and slowly pressed the plunger.

I watched the Kool-Aid-colored fluid flow through the clear tube and could see when it started to enter my body.

And I felt – nothing.

There was no sensation from the fluid, no burning, no buzzing, no tingling.

In fact, Monica had warned me that if I did feel burning, I should tell her immediately and she would stop, because that would indicate that the stuff had leaked. It can cause third-degree burns on flesh, but doesn’t have the same impact on blood vessels.

That anticlimactic moment typified what turned out to be a tedious day of waiting and schlepping.

We showed up at the cancer center this morning laden with three bulging bags of supplies – food, hot and cold beverages, books and magazines, a laptop, a giant 3-ring notebook the center gave me and expected me to lug in for each treatment, my seven bottles of prescribed meds and vitamins (so they could double-check them).

When I went to the VAD (vascular access device) room to get blood drawn, a motherly nurse named Vivian exerted herself to be extra comforting, because she could see I was shaking from anxiety about my first time.

“It won’t be as bad as you think,” she said. “Just this one little needle stick may be the worst part of the whole day.”

And she was right. Inserting the needle into the port was just a pinprick. Once it was in with a tube connected, it stayed there all day so they could both draw blood and administer drugs through it.

“Some patients really grow to love their port because it saves them from getting stuck all the time,” Vivian said.

“Love” might be overstating it, but I could definitely see the advantage.

Then it was back to the waiting room, then back to the VAD room for another blood draw, then a wait while they called my doctor to see if she wanted yet another blood draw (she did).

For the vital signs tests, three different technicians each called their patient at the same time, creating a scene like the cash registers in Filene’s Basement. Each patient had a support person and a technician, so there were nine of us milling in a narrow corridor, the three patients waiting our turns to sit in the single chair. It was clear I was a newbie, as the other two were already bald. Mark and I tried (unsuccessfully) to tuck our giant bags discreetly out of the way.

We met with Dr. D, my oncologist, who was as efficient as ever, this time focusing on the post-chemo meds.

Friends have asked if I like her, and I do, but that’s almost irrelevant. Much as it pains me to resort to martial clichés, the intensity with which she’s outlined my situation has made one thing clear: This is war.

You don't pick a general who's nice, namby-pamby or conciliatory. Dr. D is someone who will marshal all available resources to eradicate the enemy that has invaded my body.

“The first time is your best shot to get rid of cancer,” someone told me. "If it comes back, they can't do as much. You want to do everything you can to knock it out now."

My fervent hope is that this phase will be the one and only time.

That's why I'm doing the dose-dense chemo Dr. D recommended. The theory is that by hitting them every other week, the cancer cells won't have as much time to recover before the next onslaught. Of course, neither will the healthy cells that also get destroyed.

After still more waiting and then some waiting, we were finally ushered to the infusion center and into one of the alcove/rooms where a portly middle-aged man sprawled on one of the two recliners, being tended to by a pair of nurses. My face fell. I really, really didn’t want to spend the day making strained conversation with a guy who looked like the banker dude from “Monopoly.”

But the nurse coordinator wheeled us right around and whispered to me: “I’ll find you another room, hon. I like to keep the same gender together.”

I could have hugged her.

It made for yet another wait, but she not only found me a different room, it was a private one, usually saved for disabled patients.

“We like to make things easier for your first time,” she said.

Monica hooked me up to the pre-chemo drugs that forestall nausea. A pump emitted a monotonous whirring and thump every other second as it pushed the drugs into me.

Then it was time for the Adriamycin, which took 20 minutes to administer via the syringes. Next up was another chemo drug, Cytoxan. It has its own litany of side effects, many of them similar (but not as intense) as those from Adriamycin, plus a few others, such as bladder infections. That got pumped in for an hour.

All day long, we heard lengthy (and repetitive) discourses from everyone – doctor, pharmacist, nurses, nutritionist – cautioning about the side effects, discussing all the meds to take to stave them off, advocating that I drink drink drink fluids to flush all the poisons from my body. Believe me, I’m motivated.

“You should feel okay on your chemo day and the day after because the IV steroids will still be in your system,” we’d heard at orientation. “But Day 3 – Whamo! That’s when you’ll start feeling tired and cruddy. Day 4 will be bad. By Day 5, you’ll start feeling like you’ll live. On Day 6 you’ll see more light at the end of the tunnel, and by Day 7, you should feel okay.”

After six hours at the center, three of them getting the various meds, it was finally time to go home.

“You’ll probably want to get a buzz cut before your next chemo in two weeks,” Monica said in parting. “By then your hair will be falling out in big hunks.”

Countdown towards chemo

It’s not just Drano they’re injecting into my veins.

It’s actually a carefully crafted “cocktail.” As I understand it (I may be bit shaky on the precise medical terms), the ingredients are Drano, Agent Orange and Round-up. See, it contains something orange – that must mean it’s kind of like a screwdriver, albeit one made with the worst rotgut imaginable.

How toxic is it?

At chemo orientation, they said our partners must wear condoms for protection from our soon-to-be-noxious bodily fluids.

We toured the "infusion center.” Since I’d heard so much about the comfy recliners for receiving chemo, I was picturing that it would have a homey feel, like an upscale birthing center with Martha Stewart-esque fabrics and colors and lots of nice touches to warm it up.

It looks a lot more like an ICU.

There’s a nurse’s station in the middle and maybe 10 patient rooms – actually they’re more like small alcoves. As a cubicle dweller, I should feel right at home.

The décor may be lacking but the people are indeed warm.

Melody, the head nurse, is a friend of a friend, and gave me a huge, welcoming hug and whispered that they’d take good care of me.

The orientation was informative if not totally comforting.

The best news is that retching one’s guts out after chemo is a thing of the past. Patients may still feel queasy, but the nausea-blocking drugs are super-powerful. I’ve been prescribed five separate meds to prevent nausea and that doesn’t count the anti-nausea drugs they’ll give me intravenously. If need be, post-chemo we can return to the infusion center for more IV anti-nausea meds and IV hydration.

Fatigue is another matter. There are likely to be several days of feeling cruddy after each infusion. Since chemo is cumulative, the bad days can get worse and more frequent with each new cycle.

I don’t feel sick. It’s still so hard to grasp the paradox that I am agreeing to be poisoned – in the pursuit of good health.

Carolyn (in) Wonderland

Carolyn Wonderland – a dynamic redhead who could be the love-child of Janis Joplin and Bonnie Raitt – was among the fabulous singers belting out tunes at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival this weekend. As connoisseurs of all things Carolyn, Mark and I naturally gravitated to her performance. Unfortunately we couldn’t make it to the Carolina Chocolate Drops to keep our theme going but we compensated by drinking in lots of other amazing acts.

Boogeying in the fog turned out to be good for what ails me, although my clavicle critter (the chemo port) occasionally protested being jounced by tweaking some pain receptors –- getting me to squeal as though I were a critter myself. Later, alone in the crowd as Joan Baez’s clarion soprano soared over us all, I turned to the solace of a good cry.

On our way home, we passed throngs of pink-clad pedestrians hustling across the Golden Gate Bridge. “It’s a breast cancer walk-a-thon,” Mark exclaimed. At home when he turned on a football game, the players had accessorized with bright-pink chin straps, arm bands, towels and even cleats.

As if I’d hired a astrologer to predict when the stars would align, I appear to be starting chemo at an auspicious time, Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

The whole think-pink theme inspires mixed feelings. Lori’s articulate essay crystallizes some of them, as does Barbara Ehrenreich’s brilliant “Welcome to Cancerland.”

Being a new arrival in Cancerland, I’m appreciative that breast cancer now inspires such mainstream sympathy. As a teen, I remember my mom pulling me aside to whisper that our next-door neighbor had just had a mastectomy, as though it were something shameful. That was a couple of years before Betty Rollins (“First, You Cry”) and Betty Ford flung open the doors of the breast-cancer closet.

But I totally get that all the pink focus on the “race for the cure” sidesteps an inconvenient truth: What have we done to our planet to help engender all this cancer?

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In other news, without even meaning to, I played the cancer card today. The technician at my pelvic ultrasound was annoyed that I was late, until I handed her my PET/CT report and said, “I’m here to find out whether my breast cancer might have metastasized to my uterus or ovaries.”

In an instant, she transformed from Nurse Ratched to Florence Nightingale, radiating warmth and concern.

When it was over, she ignored the rules that results must be explained to the patient by the referring doctor. After conferring with the radiologist, she returned to the room and said, “The doctor says your fibroids are the same size that they were 18 months ago at your last ultrasound, and the posterior uterine area that lit up (on the PET scan) clearly look like a fibroid.”

Then she put her hand on my arm and said simply, “Good luck.”

I choked up as I walked out, both from relief and from gratitude for her compassion.

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.