The Adventures of Cancer Bitch

MORE JANUARY 16. HEMATOLOGY

2 JANUARY 16. CELLS GONE WILD It begins with a whiff of criminality: a suspicious place on a routine mammogram. Something fishy. On the film, a dark circle that doesn’t belong there. There being my body. The body that has, perhaps , gone wild. On the cellular level. Cancer is overproduction, the assembly belt gone haywire, the sorcerer’s broom wheeling out of control when the apprentice thinks he knows enough. Too much too much too many. The experts examine and pick and remain closelipped . It could be something. Or nothing. But they say or nothing as an afterthought. Because they know it’s cancer but they can’t say it yet because Pathology hasn’t said so. And then Pathology says so. And then the radiology Fellow says: It’s positive. The surgeon says, It’s in three places, not one, and we’ll have to take off the whole breast, we can’t conserve it. It sounds like it happens fast but it doesn’t. There is much waiting, in the hospital in a pale blue gown that’s both too loose and too tight with those little blue ties that never match up. There are phone calls. The whole thing—is a relief in a way. Because with every mammogram I’ve ever had, I’ve gone through cancer scenarios in my head: all the way to whether I’ll have an obituary in the Tribune written by a staff writer (a news obituary) or whether my husband Linc will have to pay for a death notice. I wonder whether he’ll sit shiva (Of course not) or if my mother will (Yes, of course). And I worry about my papers. My words—my six tall file cabinets filled with finished and unfinished manuscripts, letters from the days when people wrote letters , accounts of dreams from the early 1980s. Where will they go? No archivist has ever come calling, asking for Everything. Or anything. I know these questions are substitutes for questions about me, my Self. My body will go to Science. And then I will be gone from this earth. MORE JANUARY 16. HEMATOLOGY ThedayIwentforthefollow-upmammogramIalsohadanappointment with a hematologist because I have a high platelet count—high enough to be monitored but not to require intervention. The official name is 3 essential thrombocythemia. Before the doctor came in, a fourth-year medical student interviewed me to practice his skills. He was nervous and hadn’t read my chart. I was telling him about my long menstrual periods, which supposedly aren’t related to the low amount of iron in my blood, according to doctors, but I think really are. I said, in explanation , I have fibroids. Oh, he said, I’m one of three boys. Pause. He mumbled: What did you say? I pretended I didn’t hear him, but for a moment imagined the spectre of five sons, imagined them around me in the patient room. I explained: Fibroids. Uterine fibroids. JANUARY 24. HOW NOT TO TELL YOUR CLASS ABOUT YOUR BREAST CANCER 1. Be grateful that during class you don’t think about your cancer, except during free-writing, when they’re making lists that begin with Because, using as a model a poem by Susan Donnelly called “Why I Can’t”. The title of your list is: Why I Don’t Trust Doctors Who Are Very Good Looking. 2. Tell them as soon as you know, on the day you get your terse diagnosis from the Cold (and good-looking) Blonde at the hospital. Don’t wait until you have concrete information that your students will need, such as dates of classes you will miss. 3. Wait until five minutes before class ends. While they are standing with their coats on, say that you have something to tell them. That you have breast cancer. Expect your voice to be calm. It will not be. It will break. You will be in danger of crying. Tell them you will find substitutes for any classes you’ll miss. Tell them you’re going to talk to a surgeon the next day, but be unable to continue, leaving them stunned. Then exit. 4. On the way home, think about how irresponsible you were. 5.Athome,sendane-mailtoallofthem,tellingthemyou’resorryifyou freaked them out. Become paranoid when only one of them replies. 6. Have a friend tell you that it’s all about what you need, so whatever you needed to do was OK. Know that...