After the Cure: The Untold Stories of Breast Cancer Survivors

“Like Talking to a Wall”

81 4 “Like Talking to a Wall” T H R E E A F R I C A N A M E R I C A N women met during a focus group to discuss the ways breast cancer affects social relationships both during and after therapy. Ida Jaffe began: My family was very supportive in helping me. My husband was very supportive, and I have two daughters, and they were just right there for me. But I did have an experience with a so-called friend. I’ll say a so-called friend because she was there through all of the initial part of the treatment, right at the beginning and everything . Then after all the chemo and radiation and everything was over, and I was still bald, she said, “Why don’t you wear a wig?” And I said, “Because I really don’t care to wear a wig. It’s just not my thing. I’m bald headed, just bald headed. Accept me like I am.” And she said, “You need to get back into life. Let’s get back to shopping.” And I said, “You know, I just can’t really do it at this time. I’m not feeling like it.” She said, “You know what? You need to get over this. You’re just carrying this cancer thing a little bit too far.” And I thought, “Oh really, that’s how you feel?” And she says, “Yeah, you know,” she says, “it’s over. You’re treated, you’re healed. Get on with life!” And my family, I would tell them things up to a point. After a while you burn people out. They’re burned out on your being tired, and the fears that you have. So if you ask me, then I’ll tell you. But if you don’t ask me, I really don’t need to tell you. This 82 “Like Talking to a Wall” thing, this cancer, you’re in it on your own. I mean, yes, everybody ’s concerned about you, and everybody wants the best for you, but it’s you. You’re alone. The next speaker was Marsha Dixler: When I was diagnosed, I had been divorced for several years and my daughter, I guess she was fourteen. And I had been dating a guy for several years. He couldn’t deal with it. He related my breast cancer to a root canal. A root canal! But that’s a man. At first that was real, real hurtful. At the time I need you the most, and we’ve been together for years. You of all people know me better than anybody, and now you can’t deal with it. And then I found out that he had moved some other lady in with him, like in a matter of three or four months after we broke up. But then I have a very supportive family. My sister loves me unconditionally . Two brothers, if I would ever hear them say no to me, that’s when I’ll probably faint. I mean never in my life have I ever called them and said anything, and they said no. Every single surgery that I had—my sister lives in Little Rock—every single surgery she came out here. And I even know on a couple of occasions she had had to have some type of surgery herself; she had them give her a local so she could come out here and be with me, because she knew I would have been by myself. And then she didn’t tell me that. She did that because I would have been mad. But to find out something like that, to know you have a sister that will go under a knife locally just to come and be with you, then all the stuff with that guy, it wasn’t real anyway. Pat Garland continued the discussion: My family was a little bit different from you guys’. We’re a very small family. First of all, my mother only had four children. And my mother died from breast cancer. So when I was diagnosed at forty something, my two sisters could not deal with it. They just totally panicked. My daughter was in her twenties. She panicked. She told “Like Talking to a Wall” 83 me every time she saw me her breasts would hurt. My son, he...