Cancer Chronicles – Dancing with Death
Facebook post of March 06, 2018 8:51 am
I have gone back and forth (and back and forth…) about posting the following. So many people are struggling with so many things – BIG and not as big – that I was reluctant to post my current medical situation. It’s a common one. And I’ll probably come out of it peachy. The deciding factor that led me to share this is that I would want to looped in if this were the one of my (Facebook) friends’ situation.
On Monday I will be having surgery for breast cancer. It has all happened so quickly. I had pain. Don’t believe the outdated messaging that pain does NOT mean cancer. Please spread that fact, it could save someone time. My Chicago Primary Care doctor saw me within twenty-four hours. She sent me off for the whole works – those of you who know, know: mammogram, 3-D mammogram, ultrasound, core biopsy. Then the call with the results. Then, appointments with oncologist and surgeon. Then, a second opinion with another oncologist and another surgeon. One possibility was a bilateral mastectomy – bye bye, both boobs. So, there was an MRI. The second opinion place studied the tissue sample from the first place.
The final plan is a lumpectomy, one breast. Since so many of us are asymmetrical anyway, this might just even me out. Or not. I could care less.
I am definitely glad that I had Dan take those photos of me on the nude beach in San Diego back in November. There will be more photos taken before Monday. For before and after.
I’m all set up in our little apartment in Oak Park. Sam and one of our cats are here. Dan is holding down the fort in Galesburg but comes up weekends and for an occasional mid-week meeting in the Loop.
I did not choose the second opinion place lightly. For one, they were able to schedule my surgery a month earlier and I have a fast-growing tumor. But/And it might just maybe perhaps be a teensy bit that I have a little doctor crush. On my yarmulke wearing white hair and bearded Medical Oncologist. Who is kind and talkative and who even popped in, two times, during my two hour consult with the Naturopath and then the Surgeon. He graduated from University of Glasgow Faculty of Medicine in 1969. He has a lovely Scottish lilt that slides in and out and weaves wildly with what I am calling his Orthodox Jewish lexicon.
I admit I am mesmerized. Outcomes can be influenced when a positive affective connection exists and I am positively connected with the doctors and staff at Cancer Treatment Centers of America up in Zion. It’s a slick business and they know that the personal touch is important. It feels a little like a futuristic cult. I half expect all the cheery women escorting me all over the large and complicated building to start hovering – gliding around without walking – with some hidden space age hoverpack.
It’s a long drive up to Zion. It’s almost to the Wisconsin border. And the facility feels a bit like a compound. Every time I was surely looking the least bit confused and was looking at signage on the wall, to find the right elevator, to go to the next floor, for yet another appointment, a smiley, peaches and cream-complected, Midwestern-looking gal – wearing flats! – would appear out of nowhere and ask if I needed help. And then walk me all the way to wherever I needed to go. One time I was just looking for the chapel – I like to find chapels in hospitals – and no one knew for sure where it was. It appears that they are always moving things around (like entire departments) in the hospital. Rehab is about to be moved to where the yoga studio is, for example. After five different people were consulted about where the chapel currently was, I wandered the maze of the hospital corridors, complete with my perky escort, and now both she and I know where it is. It had a LOT of material in Spanish. Almost none in English. A Spanish Zion in Illinois? It was a peaceful room with a little stained-glass and I spent some time there.
When I got done with my lab work early, I had a gap before the MRI. I saw a flier for their spa services (most of them having to do with hair: loss, wigs, extensions, eyebrows, etc.) They offer chair massage, table massage and Reiki. The chair massage was only $10 so I figured if ever there were a day to splurge… and called from one of the lobbies. The chair masseur was not available, but Svetlana was, for a 20 minute ($20) table massage.
So, I booked it to begin ten minutes from right then, hung up the phone, looked the slightest bit confused, and out of nowhere a magical guide appeared. (Seriously.) I told her that I felt like I was at the North Pole and that she was one of many elves that helped make the place magical and cheery. I told her my experience of being escorted around. That I had said, “Excuse me,” to a woman going into a break room (I could see the coffee machines) and she just turned on her (flat!) heel, come out of what was probably a well-needed break and walked me to where I next needed to go.” She laughed (perkily, cheerily, elfishly, cult-like?) at my take on their customer service.
Do any of you remember the “Puppy Episode” on The Ellen Show? When Ellen “came out.” In the final scene, she and all her friends went to a lesbian bar, and Melissa Ethridge gave Laura Dern a blender? a juicer? a crockpot? for having brought a convert into the fold – or something like that. In essence they were mocking the conversion model of some groups as if LGBTQ folks have conversion intentions, like some religions do.
Well: did you know that if you have cancer you get a free M3P player?????!!!!!!!! So, after meeting with the Oncology Surgeon (another very old dude, super experienced – he certainly has laid/lain? hands and scalpel on millions of boobs, graduated University of Rochester 1971 and is Board certified in both plastic/reconstructive surgery and acupuncture, and has 47 years practicing and teaching oncology surgery of the breast – I have a crush on his credentials in addition to his kind, calm, thoroughness) for an hour and fifteen minutes, his nurse came in and asked if I wanted to be in a study. I am cautious of studies. But open to the medically people learning things. This is a “Healing Sounds Research Study, testing how listening to recordings that combine three types of sound may affect levels of anxiety and physical state before and after breast surgery.” I agreed. Before knowing that I would be given an M3P player (and not even really knowing what one is) and some really fancy headphones.
I have listened to the two different, thirty-minute recordings. Yesterday. And “it is good.” Guided visualizations with calming music, ocean waves and chiming something or other. The only drawback is that the woman’s voice is not crystal clear all the time, so when she is asking me to soften my ???, I’m not always sure if she is saying neck or legs, or arms or eyes. So I just soften whatever part of my body I want to. It isn’t a Morgan Freeman-quality recording but I am just going with the soft, groovy flow of it. I just read the description of the sounds: “binaural beats, perceived in the brain as be??? when each ear hears a slightly different frequency.” The word be??? is covered with the lovely tree logo of the page it’s printed on.
At some point I’ll ask someone, and also point out that the woman’s voice is a little hard to make out sometimes. I might even volunteer to record the script for them (LATER). I have Expert Experience on that kind of thing. For one, I have been told I could make money with my great phone sex voice – not that I have/would. But in Mexico, in the summer of 1981, I recorded the Spanish to English translation of the textbook book for the air traffic controllers at the airport in Veracruz. I was put up in a small government hotel for as many days as it took me to record the book into a very low budget tape recorder. So, I think I could combine my one “professional” experience with my untapped phone sex voice and make a cancer calming guided visualization tape!!! Maybe I could even get a third career out of this!? At the very least I got a new toy, one that I can keep, and the nurturing practice of listening to gooey yumminess for two thirty-minute sessions a day until surgery.
Recently I just saw a Facebook post of Other Worldly: Words Both Strange and Lovely from Around the World, and I LOVE these:
Nemophilist (noun, English) – a haunter of the woods; one who loves the forest and its beauty and solitude
Mbuki-mvuki (verb phrase, Bantu) – to shed one’s clothing spontaneously and dance naked in celebration
Having now learned these delicious words, I thenceforth will call myself a Nemophilist who takes every opportunity to mubki-mvuki. (perhaps the “to” is redundant if it is an infinitive verb…?) Hopefully I have years and years to do so. In the meantime, knowing that we all have a clock ticking, I will try to choose gratitude for all the blessings I have and to keep on trying to live as juicily as I can.
Thanks for any prayers.