The Adventures of Cancer Bitch

MARCH 3. THE ANGEL

43 MARCH 3. THE ANGEL I just read Cancer Vixen, the graphic memoir, and it is in color and hardbound, and the author is alive, and it’s very odd that her mother goes to chemo with her and never her husband, and she tells the oncologist she needs light chemo because she can’t lose her hair because of all the super-beautiful women who are always after her husband, who owns a chic restaurant. And she loves fancy, expensive, highheeled shoes. All reasons not to like her. I admire nothing about her except her work ethic. She is a reporter-cartoonist, taking camera, tape recorder, sketch pad, and notebook with her to her cancer appointments . Her book scares me; she makes me afraid of the horribleness of chemo, the cold in your veins, the fatigue, the nausea, the fatigue, the very long needles, the pain in your hand where the nurse sticks the very long needle, the fatigue, the weight gain, the $3,500 shot you have to get if your white blood cells are languishing, and the way that shot feels like it’s filling your whole body up with concrete. I don’t want to be her. I want to be like Miriam Engelberg, author of the black-and-white, crudely drawn CancerMadeMeaShallower Person—but she died. I cried for her tonight because she’s the one I want to be like and she died. Linc asked tonight if I was traumatized by looking at my chest and I said no. It’s true. It seems familiar for some reason. Something about the chest with its bruises and stitches seems familiar. Why? Is it because I’ve seen pictures of torture victims in appeals from Amnesty International and other groups? But I can’t imagine that I’ve seen a lot of torture photos. Have I seen pictures of mastectomy scars? Maybe. The numbness in my smashed-in breast feels familiar, maybe from biopsies, especially the recent ones, where the specialists pushed and poked the breast. They were trying to save it, like bombing the village. Linc imitates the stitches by pulling in his lips to form a straight line. I love my right breast, which is still there. And still banged up from the mri-assisted biopsy. I’m glad I don’t need my chest for my job. I don’t need my 44 chest for my job, but I would like to have it reconstructed because it would make life easier for me. My job is my writing. Even with chemo I’ll have to work. Like I said, I admired Cancer Vixen’s work ethic, and her mother yelling in the middle of the chemo room, as the nurse is sticking her daughter’s right hand over and over, That’s her drawing hand! MORE MARCH 3. THE BAD DAUGHTER Today I stood up my mother—my loyal, loving, 78-year-old mother who’d said she wished it was herself and not me who had the cancer. I was so frustrated with her for not answering her cell phone. She was awol, not answering at her hotel either. And then she called me around 2:30 from the Art Institute and said she would leave the museum at 4:30 and take a cab to my condo. I went out by myself for the first time, to the little café down the street, Emerald City Coffee, just before 4 and stayed a while, and kept calling her phone from the café to see if she had left yet. Then I called my home phone and there was a message asking where I was, that she was in my lobby and it was cold and she was disappointed I wasn’t there. I called her and got her, and she said she was going to just go back to her hotel. I said I’d be right there. I was two blocks away. In the meantime a neighbor let her in the building and offered to let her wait in her apartment. When I got there Linc had arrived home and let her in. She kept saying she was going back to the hotel, and I was angry and said I didn’t want to leave her out there but she said she was leaving at 4:30 and I thought she would call me when she left. And last time she’d called from the cab to say she was around...