Tag Archives: cancer

You Are Not Alone

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Picasso's Blue Nude

In September 2012,  I was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of uterine cancer. Treatment was successful, and I am happy to report that I am cancer-free and doing well. I wrote for a private circle of friends and family about my experiences at the time, and am now sharing some of my musings here. 

Two packages arrive today. One, from my friend Gale, is a CD called “preparing for surgery: guided imagery exercises for relaxation and accelerated healing.” I wonder about the all-lowercase title. Is it meant to be soothing and low-key, the typesetting equivalent of hushed tones? Or reminiscent of ee cummings from decades ago, when none of us worried about preparing for surgery?

The other package, from my friend Mary, also contains information about surgery preparation, including another CD. “Successful Surgery and Recovery” promises to help me “LEARN AUTOGENIC PRESURGICAL TECHNIQUES, MINIMIZE COMPLICATIONS, ENHANCE THE HEALING RESPONSE, CONTROL POST-OPERATIVE PAIN.” The full caps are even more alarming.

I’ve told my friends, By all means, bring it on–send me anything you think will be helpful. I am open to all resources, good wishes, prayers, and casseroles. But now that the material has arrived, I think, Get this stuff out of here! I do not wish it in my life. More accurately, I do not wish to have cancer and the kind of life that requires knowing what “AUTOGENIC” means.

Mary has enclosed a card. It’s orange and red and grey, with a picture of a smiling little girl with straight-cut bangs holding a cake. (Mary and I are both good bakers, and know how to deliver comfort by creaming butter and sugar.) The front of the card says “shine a light where it’s dark and scary,” and my goodness, hasn’t cake often been that kind of light?

Inside the card Mary has written, in her beautiful Catholic-school cursive:

 Hope some of this ‘shines a light.’ You are, of course, in my thoughts and prayers. Get better soon!!!

The last thing I pull from Mary’s care package is another booklet: “You Are Not Alone: A Guide for Women Newly Diagnosed with Cancer.”

I burst into tears.

 

Ten Minutes

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Diet Coke can

“Did you know that every Diet Coke takes 10 minutes off your life?” my daughters asked.

Their campaign to break my habit reminded me of myself at their age, on a crusade to get my mother to stop smoking three packs a day. My daughters never tried to flush my Diet Coke down the toilet, as I often did with my mother’s cigarettes, but their worry was the same. And although I generally only quaffed a can a day and did not poison them with second-hand backwash, I was the same as my mother: I ignored the concerns of my loved ones.

“Ten minutes!” I replied. “So what?”

I did a quick calculation. If I drank one Diet Coke a day for 40 years to come, that would mean 101 days off of my life. Double that, to allow for hyper-caffeinated days plus all the diet soda I’d imbibed since adolescence till this moment of truth with my adolescents. We were still only talking about 202 days off the long life I envisioned ahead of me.

“That’s way less than a year!” I told my daughters. “It’s worth it.”

Years passed as I merrily sipped away. Then I was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of uterine cancer. Different calculations preoccupied me: Would I see my daughters marry? Get to babysit their children? Make it to my youngest daughter’s graduation from college in a few months? How long till Christmas? I craved every one of those 202 days I’d been so blithely willing to forfeit. Every ten minutes might help me reach some important milestone.

I swore off Diet Coke the day I was diagnosed, and haven’t touched a drop since. It’s not that I think it caused my cancer (“If only figuring out what causes cancer were that easy!” said my Kaiser nutritionist). Since Diet Coke was about my only vice if you don’t count chocolate, I spend very little time blaming myself. Cancer happens. To a lot of us.

Since those dark early days, I’ve learned that my cancer was detected at the earliest possible stage, and that my prognosis is excellent. I should have many, many good years ahead of me. But they’ll be free of Diet Coke.

It’s my pledge to my daughters. I can’t promise them that I won’t eventually succumb—to something, if not cancer. But I can promise to give up Diet Coke.