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...

"May I Be Blunt With You?"

In the wink of an eye

One can occasionally be transported to another time and place and in that moment be awake and aware and it can be sweet.

Last week I was getting ready for bed and pulled my T-shirt over my head and then realized that I'd forgotten that I was still wearing my Removaboobs and that was a funny little moment where I'd forgotten about my cancerous past. Aahh...

A few days before that I almost left the house without putting on the Removaboobs and I thought it was interesting that my body felt like they were on when they weren't.

Phantom pheelings make for frantic feelings.

Insert tasteless "stiffs" joke here

I am really too speechless to comment on the "Men of the Mortuaries" calendar, which raises money for breast cancer survivors. I guess if you've gotta go, it's good to know the guy putting you in the box looks good in his underwear.

Rules for spectators

Rule No. 1: You do not ask me if "they found the cancer early" or whether I'm "cancer-free now" or "all done with this" in front of my 9-year-old daughter. Unless, of course, you just want me to lie to you.

Rule No. 2: You especially don't ask me, "What's your long-term prognosis?" in front of my 9-year-old daughter. Unless, of course, you just want me to punch you in the face and then lie to you.