The Adventures of Cancer Bitch

AUGUST 7. THE NEVER-ENDING END

106 Still I was weepy. My sister called and I told her how weepy I was and she said I had been so strong before. Everyone has the impression that I’ve been Strong and Courageous. But I don’t know what that means. I just hadn’t been weepy much before. Audrey Hepburn was English-Dutch, born in Brussels. Her English father walked out on the family. Both parents were Nazi sympathizers , but after her mother moved the family to the Netherlands and saw her native land invaded, the mother soon supported the Resistance . According to some accounts, Hepburn saw the execution of her uncle for his Resistance work, and saw Jews killed in the street. She studied ballet and performed in concerts to raise money for the Resistance, and was also a courier. During the famine toward the end of the war, she suffered with the rest of the population, subsisting on tulip bulbs and grasses. This may have affected her metabolism. Except when she was pregnant, she kept herself down to 103 pounds. She was five-foot-seven. In 1987 she became the unicef goodwill ambassador, and died in 1993 at age 63 of colon cancer, by some accounts, but it may have been cancer of the appendix. Hepburn was allegedly offered the title role in the Diary of Anne Frank, but refused because she was afraid it would stir up too much internal trauma. AUGUST 7. THE NEVER-ENDING END This morning I was on my way to meet a creative-writing client at Emerald City when a young man on a bicycle asked me for directions. I told him how to get to where he was going, and then he asked me about the message on my head. You must feel really strongly, he said. I felt unmasked. My head as canvas was a side effect, not a deliberate political act. I told him that I lost my hair from chemo. I started to feel that if I were really committed, I would have shaved my head back when I had hair. But I guess a button will have to do when the hair sprouts back. I had to go today to Fancy Hospital to get blood tests before I can get my port removed. Then I went down to the fourth floor for an mri of the remaining breast. I went by myself and it felt rou- 107 tine. Ah, I remember just a few months ago when an mri was a big deal. Before I went inside the machine, the tech needed to mark the places on my breast where I had scars, and she used vitamin E capsules to do it. She just taped the golden ovals onto my breast. She said the vitamin E shines up brightly in the pictures. I asked her who thought of that. She didn’t know. Afterwards, I went to Smart U to photocopy some handouts. I saw Hugo there, who mans the desk in the hallway. I told him I was through with chemo. So you’re in remission? he asked. I guess, I said. The word scares me because Jesse was in remission. And then his cancer came back. I stopped in at Barry’s tonight. He was in the midst of moving himself from one mechanized wheelchair to another. He fell. It took quite a while to get him from the floor to the sofa. He can move his arms and hands but he doesn’t have much strength in them. His legs are dead weights. He told me that the Irregular Helper had called to say she couldn’t come tonight. I said, I’m not going to help you get ready for bed. I keep telling him he has to hire someone better. He says a reliable service is too expensive. I figure if we don’t help he’ll be forced to hire someone else. Linc came over and we moved Barry to the chair. I relented and we were going to help Barry go to bed but he wasn’t ready. He wanted to watch Jon Stewart. So we didn’t. We shall hope for the best. He has the kind of ms that just gets worse and worse. There is no remission. Sharon has put him on some supplements, which seems to make him more alert. The doctor says the disease is eating up his spine. He has pain and spasms and his legs shake. I said, You...