The Adventures of Cancer Bitch

MARCH 1. I HAVE RETURNED

40 So I am a living Jewish joke. My father used to say that the hypochondriac ’s tombstone says, I told you I was sick. All this worrying about everything, and here I am with a malignancy. Three tumors, or else one big one that’s made up of three smaller ones. Quick, a joke, which may or may not have been in that book: Two German Jews are in Paris in the late 1930s, having fled Berlin. They’re sitting at a sidewalk café and see a group of French soldiers march by, barely in step. Ach, says one derisively, ours are so much better. MORE FEBRUARY 28. THE KNIFE I will be having a sentinel node biopsy. My surgeon has performed hundreds of them, if not thousands. Linc and I surmise that the doctor at Plain Hospital just plain doesn’t do them. MORE FEBRUARY 28. MORE KNIFE Will my world finally cave in on me when I wake up tonight and see the bandage covering what used to be my left breast? MARCH 1. I HAVE RETURNED I am home, we had a good dinner (a million times more nutritious than anything the hospital served), I’m not in much pain, I feel a little weak but OK, the lymph node was negative (preliminarily), of course the hospital staff woke me up every two hours, I’m wrapped in an Ace bandage and haven’t seen the incision yet, I have blood draining from the incisions into two drain tubes that end in two bulbs which I can’t figure how to hide under my clothing, Linc has a cold so won’t sleep with me, my student Cory and his family sent me beautiful tulips— purple, yellow, red, and white. MARCH 2. DRAIN BULBS At the hospital, I thought it would be impossible to learn to strip the drains and empty the bulbs. This is what the contraptions are, as far as I can tell: Two thin plastic tubes are stuck inside the incisions and at ...