The Adventures of Cancer Bitch

APRIL 22. DEATH

148 is the possible imminence of my demise. I think: This will be one less task for Linc. Though it’s just the tip. I still have six four-drawer file cabinets in my office at home. I have files and files of journal entries and accounts of my dreams (boring, but after toting them around for 30 years, I’m loath to throw them out) and letters and even faxes. I have my bat mitzvah speech and notes my friends passed to me in seventh grade, and comic strips I drew featuring talking French pastry , and research on the Weimar Republic, back when you had to go through everything so painstakingly via newspaper indices and micro- film and -fiche. My work will help future researchers who want to write on the history of journalism and liberal arts education. My papers will be catalogued and tucked away, not too far from the Leopold-Loeb ransom note and other treasures. When I was at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, we were told that copies of all our stories and poems that we discussed in class were sent automatically to the university archive, the idea being that at least some of our peers would become famous. When I took a seminar on biography, we often talked about the surfeit of information . The problem of the future, we said, will be surplus—too many documents, too many photos, too many home videos. How will researchers be able to sift through and weigh? What will our family members, not yet born, appreciate having and what would they rather not be bothered with? The other day I talked on the phone to my mother and she said she’d received so many nice notes from people who had attended her birthday festivities in March. Once a friend of hers told her that you keep notes and cards so you can read them in your old age. I’m in my old age now, my mother said, so I can throw them away. APRIL 22. DEATH 1. . . . AND TAXES This year my accountant asked me again if I saw the world any differently because of the cancer. I said no. Which is mostly true; I now have one more thing to worry about. As I grow older and possibly 149 middle-aged I think that even if I lived to an old age, I could die relatively soon, in 35 years or so. That’s fewer years than I’ve already been alive. To rephrase the coal miners’ song a bit, Another day older and deeper in death. Linc’s mother is 85 and walks two miles every day and exercises in water and on land. My mother is 80 and walks in the mall and goes to her Jewish mothers’ exercise class and to book club and to lectures and bridge games and has two or three theater subscriptions. She even drives at night. Neither of them has had cancer. 2. AN ACCOUNTING But it would be disingenuous to say I haven’t learned anything from this experience. This is what I have learned: That you can switch oncologists. That you can wait to get breast reconstruction; you don’t have to have it right away. That you can say you don’t want medical Fellows to check you out first in the fullness of their ineptitude. That it’s hard to tell which is worse, emotional or physical pain, because in extremis they come together. That if they say your chemo will cause your hair to fall out, it will, even though your hair is thick and coarse. That chemo doesn’t have to cause nausea though it is ill advised to eat meals rich in butter for a few days after a session. That some people don’t know how to react to a cancer diagnosis and will disappear. That a person with whom you were friendly, who was there when you received the cancer phone call, will be decidedly unempathic and in the course of a year, will never ask how you are feeling. That not everybody has a partner who responds like Linc—meaning that not everyone’s partner will do what you take for granted: go to appointments with you and tell you to listen to your body and wonder if he’s doing enough for you and be somewhat opposed to reconstruction. 150 That your sister will call you after every chemo. That you can ask women...