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.