Let's draw a tasteful veil across the scene

Dear sister-in-breast-cancer:

I don't know how to tell you this nicely, but discussing your vaginal dryness with me at a co-ed cocktail party? SO not a bonding experience.

"You'll have to deal with this for the rest of your life."

Dear reader, the odds are good that at some point in your middle age, your doctor will diagnose some condition and tell you, "You'll have to deal with this for the rest of your life."

Surprisingly, this means you'll have to deal with this for the rest of your life. When things break after 40, they tend to stay broken. We learn this every day, yet denial remains one of the most powerful forces in the universe, stronger Peet's coffee or the under-car suction force that attracts Frisbees and dropped keys.

I'm typing this with one very tender left hand. I had a lymphedema flare-up last week, and my knuckles and fingers are still as puffy as if I had punched a wall. Which, frankly, sounds like a good idea right about now. I don't really know what sparked the flare-up -- maybe my lymph system reacted to the touch of flu I seem to have acquired, maybe I overused my left tipping books off the library shelves at my daughter's school for the end-of-year inventory. Maybe I put too much stress on my left side doing the physical therapy for my right shoulder -- the right shoulder I strained last spring trying not to overuse my left hand.

So I've spent the past nine days doing two sets of physical therapy exercises a day, one for my shoulder, one for my arm. Plus walking my daughter to school every day -- gotta get the aerobic exercise in to control my estrogen levels. Plus having the flu. I'm telling you, it's a good thing I don't have to go to a 9 to 5 right now, because my boss would be pretty close to firing my ass. As it is, I'm behind on household projects and I haven't even started to think about prep work for my fall classes.

My husband, trying to be helpful during one of my freakouts, said, "Don't worry -- you won't have this forever."

I just about snapped his head off. Because that's what I realized last week: Yes, I will. Yes, I have lymphadema. And I'm going to have to deal with this for the rest of my life.

I gnashed my teeth, but the truth had been spoken

I am weeping with jealousy that I did not write
this blog post. Nor did I come up with the slogan "It's a disease, not a marketing opportunity."

Curse you, Assertive Cancer Patient. Now I have to make a donation.

Shoulda Seen It Coming

Blue Shield doesn't want to pay for my screening MRI this time. They say a mammogram should be just fine, thank you. Oh, and we can certainly appeal their decision if we want to, but since I'm supposed to get screened every six months, an appeal would be pretty pointless -- by the time it was decided, it would be time for the next exam.

I'm not a big fan of the MRI, and it tends to give more false positives, with all the unnecessary stress and anxiety that implies. But I'm fucking pissed off at Blue Shield for overruling my doctor this way.

Knots n' tumors

All I wanted to do was find a new conditioner. The hair that I've managaed to grow since I finished chemo seven years ago needs some new 'product.' So I visited my favorite hair care supply store and it was suggested to me to try a product I'd never tried before. It comes in a pink bottle, has a big pink ribbon on the label. The product felt good on my hand and so I imagined one day soon being able to run my fingers through my smooth and detangled hair.

But there was a pink ribbon on the label that was totally harshing my shopping buzz. Why do I have to think about cancer when I'm buying conditioner? Or cereal? Or anything?

Maybe all I want to do is have a fabulous head of hair floating over a brain that is free of thoughts of reality, if only for a brief moment.

Pink shmink.

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Jon Carroll got it very right this week:

So I talk to the afflicted, and almost always I say, "Please let me know if there's anything I can do." It's a thing that people say. They say, "I'm sorry for your loss," if an actual loss is involved - would that include amputations? They say, "Everything happens for a reason," and then a large bolt of lightning turns them into a mound of charcoal, and a ghostly voice says, "What have we learned from this experience?"

Cancer has made me a crankier person

Earlier this month, distinguished cancer blogger Lymphopo powerfully described the experience of revisiting the ward where she got chemo, only to have a full-blown panic attack once she got there. She concluded:

And now, even though the worst appears to be over and I'm coping extremely well, adjusting, healing, rebuilding, still, at a very deep cellular level, permanently etched in my very neurons, I remain deeply traumatized. And this buried cellular trauma can be triggered and might rise up to haunt me and debilitate me at any time. Fun, eh?

So in one sense there's healing and moving on, but another sense there's no such thing. No matter how strong or brave I try to be, reality will never be the same.

She also admitted that she was tired of writing about having been sick:

If I decide to start another blog it'll probably just be a trivial chatty little what-I-ate-for-lunch dealie, amusing for me and my dogs and a few close friends but not so much to anybody else.

I've been meaning to blog about this post since I read it, about a week ago, but I've had a hard time getting around to it. Partially because I've been busy, but also -- let's be honest here -- because I am also tired of writing about having been sick. This is the damnedest thing: I want to shut up about it, as if I can will it into nonexistence through my silence.

In physics, there's the story of Schrodinger's cat. It's supposed to illustrate the strangeness of quantum mechanics. A cat is shut up in a steel box with a device that, at some unknown point, will kill the cat. While the box is closed, the cat is, in a sense, dead and alive at the same time.

This story also beautifully illustrates what it feels like to be a cancer survivor. Everything is both fine and awful at the same time. You may be alive; you may be dead and just not know it yet. The exquisite awareness of your own mortality wears away at you, like sandpaper, leaving you exposed and irritable.

Which reminds me: Got offered the senior discount again at the health food store up the street. That's it: I'm done shopping there. They can kiss my 49-year-old...